Why Saudi Arabians Are Back On Forbes’ Billionaires List For The First Time In 8 Years

Forbes Daily Briefing

Forbes

Careers, Business, News, Entrepreneurship

4.6 • 12 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Forbes removed the Kingdom’s billionaires from our ranking of the world’s wealthiest people in 2018, but they’re back now. Here’s what happened and why.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Thursday, April 3rd.
0:05.0	Today on Forbes, why Saudi Arabians are back on Forbes's billionaires list for the first time
0:11.0	in eight years.
0:14.0	Seven years ago, Forbes made the decision not to include billionaires from Saudi Arabia
0:19.0	on our annual world's billionaires list,
0:21.5	primarily due to one big event in the country that led to a very high level of uncertainty.
0:27.1	The house arrest and reported shakedown of hundreds of wealthy Saudi businessmen,
0:32.1	including a prominent member of the royal family.
0:35.2	This year, following a burst of new listings on the Saudi stock exchange,
0:40.0	the kingdom's billionaires are back on the list, which was just published earlier this week
0:44.1	on Tuesday. Fifteen Saudi Arabians made Forbes's 2025 ranking, up from 10 in 2017. They range from
0:53.2	the founder of a hospital group to an operator of grocery
0:56.2	stores and malls to the sign of a prominent banking family. Altogether, these billionaires,
1:02.1	all men aged 49 to 95, are worth an estimated $55.5.8 billion. The richest, and only returnee to the list, is Prince Al-Walid bin Talal, with a fortune
1:15.8	estimated at $16.5 billion.
1:19.2	About 40% of that lies in his ownership stake in the Saudi-listed Kingdom Holding, which
1:24.9	has investments in the Four Seasons hotel chain, the George Sank Hotel in
1:28.9	Paris, and had an estimated low single-digit stake in X, formerly Twitter, alongside Elon Musk.
1:36.2	Al-Walid bin Talal last appeared on Forbes's billionaires list in 2017, worth an estimated $18.7 billion.
1:48.5	Two of the other 2017-era Saudi billionaires,
1:54.8	Saleh Kamel and Abdullah al-Rajhi, have died, while the others from that period, including brothers Abdul Majid, Salman, and Fawaz al-Hokker, failed to make the cut this year due to steep drops in their
2:01.7	company's share prices. The 14 other Saudi billionaires on this year's list are all newcomers.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Forbes, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Forbes and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.