Report: Saudi Billionaire Prince Eyes Up to $300M Twitter Stake

FBN's Shibani Joshi on reports that the Prince of Saudi Arabia is looking at taking a major stake in Twitter.

Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is reportedly exploring scooping up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock in microblogging site Twitter.

According to Sky News blogger Mark Kleinman, Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding is examining taking a $200-$300 million stake in San Francisco-based Twitter from one of the company’s co-founders. After a recent round of fundraising by Twitter, that would equate to a stake of about 3%.

It’s not clear yet if Kingdom Holdings has already reached a deal with Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams or if it has simply started talks, the report said.

With about $19.6 billion in assets, Prince Alwaleed is ranked by Forbes as the 26th richest person in the world. He holds a 7% stake in FOX Business and Sky News parent News Corp. (NASDAQ:NWSA), which is run by Rupert Murdoch.

Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holdings investment company, which Wednesday reported a 24% leap in quarterly profits, also owns investments in media giant Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL).

In August Twitter raised about $800 million, mostly from existing shareholders like T Rowe Price (NASDAQ:TROW), as well as from Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies.

While daily deals site Groupon, Internet radio company Pandora (NYSE:P) and other new-age Internet companies are racing to go public or already have, Twitter has thus far resisted the IPO bug, choosing instead to perfect its business model.