Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) Chaired by HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud announced the completion of a partial monetization program with respect to its stake in NewsCorp.
During its portfolio review last year, KHC decided to reduce the size of its investment in NewsCorp via an orderly disposal program that was predominantly executed in the first half of 2014 and successfully completed by the end of the year. As a result, KHC has decreased its holding in NewsCorp from 13,184,477 class B shares, representing approx. 6.6% ownership to 2,000,000 class B shares, representing approx. 1% ownership, generating USD 188 million dollars.
This action had no impact on KHC's 6.6% holding of Twenty-First Century Fox, worth approximately $1.7 billion at current market prices.
HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal commented: "The reduction of KHC's holding in NewsCorp has been decided in the context of a general portfolio review. We remain firm believers in NewsCorp's competent management, led by CEO Robert Thomson, and are fully supportive of Rupert Murdoch and his family. Our investment in Twenty-First Century Fox, constitutes a solid foundation for our long standing relationship that we expect will endure. Twenty-First Century Fox owns a 19% stake in Rotana Group that I own independently from Kingdom Holding."
Mohammed Fahmy CFO, commented: "As an actively managed holding company, KHC reviews its portfolio of publicly listed and private investments on a regular basis. Decisions to add, hold, dispose of or reduce particular investments are always considered in the context of the overall portfolio allocation."
Founded in 1980, KHC is a publicly traded company which was listed on Tadawul (the Saudi Stock Exchange) in 2007. KHC is one of the world's most successful and diversified business organizations, highly respected in the field of investments and recognized as an elite player in the Arabian Gulf region, and internationally. The Company is recognized as one of the largest foreign investors in the United States. KHC's portfolio has its major interests in investment categories ranging from luxury hotels management hotel companies (Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Fairmont Raffles Holding Intl and Mövenpick Hotels, Resorts AG and Swissotel) and real estate (Kingdom Tower project in Jeddah and Kingdom Tower and project in Riyadh ) to hotel real estate investments such as (The Plaza, New York, Savoy Hotel, London and Four Seasons, George V Hotel, Paris and other hotels).
KHC also has investments in Petrochemical (Tasnee) Media and Publishing (News Corporation and Saudi Research and Marketing Group), as well as in Entertainment (Euro Disney S.C.A). In addition, Finance and Investment services (Citigroup), Social Media and Technology (Twitter and Jingdong). Moreover, the Company has investments in Education (Kingdom Schools), Health Care (Medical Services Projects Company), Aviation (NAS Saudi Arabia) and Agriculture (Kingdom Agricultural Development Company - KADCO Egypt).
© Press Release 2015
