Saudi billionaire prince doubles ownership of Twitter stock

In this Feb. 4, 2014 file photo, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, waves as he arrives at the headquarters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah. AP

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his investment company have doubled their ownership of Twitter’s publicly traded shares in the past six weeks.

A joint statement released Wednesday by the prince and the Riyadh-based Kingdom Holding Company says their combined shares represent more than 5 percent of Twitter’s common stock, with a market value of $1 billion.

The prince and KHC, which he chairs, originally invested $300 million in Twitter in 2011 before the micro-blogging site went public two years later.

With the most recent investments, Prince Alwaleed holds roughly 30,100,000 shares in Twitter and KHC has nearly 4,850,000 shares. TVJ