When would Prince Alwaleed like to have lunch? At 6.30pm. Where? At his hotel, the George V. Does he always stay there when he’s in Paris? Actually, he owns it.
The world’s fifth richest man, worth an estimated $21.5bn, tends to own things. There are his chunks of Citigroup and News Corp, not to mention EuroDisney, Canary Wharf, Hewlett-Packard, Time Warner and so on. Though one of his grandfathers founded Saudi Arabia and the other was independent Lebanon’s first prime minister, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is considered practically a self-made man. He has even been called the Saudi Warren Buffett, chiefly for having turned an $800m purchase of Citicorp stock into a stake worth $10bn. Not content with being rich, the prince also believes he has a divinely ordained role to bring together “east and west”.
I wait in the George V’s lobby while the prince hangs with his buddies, Richard Parsons, chairman and chief executive of Time Warner, and Sandy Weill, chairman of Citigroup. Then he goes to pray.
When I am eventually led to his regular nook in the lobby, I discover that lunching with him is not exactly a tete-a-tete. It takes a while to identify him - moustachioed, bushy-haired and extremely thin - amid his entourage of aides. A cameraman slaps a microphone on my lapel: our “lunch” is to be filmed. To complete the multimedia experience, a television is playing a tape of BBC World on fast-forward.
Noticing my surprise at the crowd, the prince’s private banker, Mike Jensen, jokes: “Don’t worry, you’re not paying for this!”
“Only for three people,” corrects the prince. I had said the FT would buy him lunch, and the prince has decided to slap an aide on to our bill. “I’ll have my salad,” he tells the waiter. It’s a rucola salad with tomatoes that is not on the menu.
The prince, 50, is observing the optional six-day fast after Ramadan, a doddle for him as he rarely eats in daytime anyway. Speaking in double-pace English, which he more or less mastered during a stint at Menlo College in California, he explains: “I was very fat before. My peak weight was - do you want pounds or kilos? - 89 kilos. Then we went down to 60. No spaghetti, no bread, no butter, no meat. Complete moratorium. I eat only one meal a day.”
He has stuck to this regime for 15 years, although “one meal a day” doesn’t mean he never otherwise eats: he says he broke his fast “just an hour ago” and his printed schedule for today lists dinner at 2am.
Prince Alwaleed doesn’t just want you to think he is thin, however. He wants you to think he is a statesman. When his salad arrives, he ignores it as he explains his mission to unite people around the world. “God blessed me with a lot of wealth. After 9/11 a major division took place between Saudi Arabia and United States, west and east, and Christianity and Islam. And I believe my role, because of what God blessed me, is to try to bridge the gap.”
The next day he will be signing deals with Harvard and Georgetown universities to finance some of their Islamic studies. It’s all part of bridging the gap. “That’s why we focus on the east coast of America. Because that’s where the decision-making process is, with all respect to west coast, north coast, or south coast.”
The prince’s most famous attempt at bridging failed. He donated $10m to New York City after the September 11 attacks. But he also called on the US government to “adopt a more balanced stance towards the Palestinian cause”. Rudolph Giuliani, New York’s then mayor, returned the cheque, and accused him of trying to justify the attacks. A Saudi newspaper later quoted the prince blaming “Jewish pressures” for Giuliani’s rejection.
Does His Highness regret his Palestinian statement? “A friend of a nation has to say the truth any time. Although, if you ask me a question, ‘If the Palestinian situation was resolved a day before 9/11, would 9/11 take place or not?’ Most likely it would have taken place, yes. I have no problem. All my friends sitting here: Mr Parsons, Christian man, Sandy Weill, a Jewish man, from Israel - from, from, from US. Muslim, Christian, Jewish - I don’t care about that.”
Indeed, by Saudi standards the prince is a liberal. Does he expect his uncle, King Abdullah, to move towards democracy? “You use the word ‘democracy’. I’ll say, ‘people’s participation in the political process’. Because there are many forms of it. I believe, for example, in people’s participation. I believe the fact that the municipal elections took place, there’s an indication that at the end of the day King Abdullah has in mind the introduction of elections at the Shoura level, our version of parliament.”
I venture that there seems to be some dissent within Saudi Arabia. “From what?” demands the prince. Well, from the monarchy. “Where do you get that from?” The newspapers. “Frankly speaking, I don’t see that at all. Most people in Saudi Arabia are really for the government. And, frankly speaking, if you look at so-called dissent outside Saudi Arabia, it’s only Saad al-Fagih [a dissident in London]. That’s superb. Population of 16 million indigenous and six million expatriates, you have one guy going publicly.” It seems tactless to mention another prominent Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden.
Yet as the prince knows, not everyone has a gleaming image of Saudi Arabia. Americans got particularly angry when 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11 turned out to be Saudis. Did the prince take stakes in western media companies partly so that he could help clear up east-west misunderstandings?
He begins with the standard denial: “My investment in the United States is not really to influence public policy.” But then he adds: “When I meet Mr Murdoch of News Corp, that owns Fox News, and BSkyB, or when I meet Mr Parsons, who controls CNN, Fortune magazine, People, Time, America Online, I don’t intrude into the management of these companies. However, I do convey to them the message about where I believe they went wrong. It’s their discretion to decide what to do. My job is to open their eyes to things they may not have seen.”
Could His Highness give an example? “One time CNN, they brought the Palestinians’ so-called terrorist act against Israelis. I communicated to them, ‘Look, you have to give the other side of the equation. Look what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.’ And they did that. And they were censured and reprimanded by the Israelis. I do not claim it’s my right to intrude. But I have to do my best to try to influence events.”
At News Corp, the prince is currently helping Murdoch rebuff an attack from the investor John Malone. No doubt it is for literary reasons alone that Murdoch’s HarperCollins has just published the hagiography Alwaleed: Businessman, Billionaire, Prince by the former CNN anchor Riz Khan. The prince has a copy by his side. “Foreworded by President Carter,” he remarks. Then he says: “Yeah, it’s being foreworded by President Carter. President Carter. By President Carter.”
“Wow,” I finally reply.
“President Carter,” he says.
Khan writes of the prince: “He’s fast-paced, incredibly organised, and a unique mix of Middle East and West... arguably, the hardest-working billionaire on the planet.” In the book, the great man’s mother and Khan watch a video of the toddler prince chasing a goat until he catches it. She tells Khan: “It showed me even then how determined my son would be.” What does the prince think of the book? “I think it reflects... reality.” When President Chirac appears on the TV set, the prince murmurs, “Ouf, Chirac!” and turns up the volume. We listen to Chirac intone about “respect”, “justice” and “equality”. The prince knows Chirac. “I can meet any president, any king, any sultan, any president of a company. It’s a very unique position.”
Does having lots of money make you happy? Only when you give it away, the prince reveals. “When the tsunami happened, I was the biggest single contributor in the world. When the Pakistan catastrophe happened, I am the... single biggest contributor on the globe. I went to Pakistan personally. The prime minister told me: ‘Prince, your visit is more important than what you can pay us.’”
We order coffee. When his arrives first, he insists on giving it to me, even though I have ordered a double and he a single. He resumes: “Something else gives me a kick: when I get involved in something that’s not successful, and all of a sudden it becomes good.” He says Citigroup, for example, was “on its knees” when he first invested in it. “And guess what: now it’s the first global bank in the world and number one company. George V - piece of rubbish. When I bought it, you order spaghetti, they say, ‘We have no spaghetti, give you rice.’ Look what: you buy it, you shut it down, you fix it up. Guess what: number one hotel in the world, for five years.” In short, unusually for a famed investor, Alwaleed appears to invest for motives other than profit.
Still, he doesn’t miss a trick. When I rise and thank him for his time, he replies: “We have to pay the bill now.” Then he offers to pay after all. I refuse. Luckily the bill is within reason - another benefit of dieting. I depart for the bottom bunk of a second-class compartment of a night train, leaving Alwaleed to unite east and west until his scheduled bedtime of dawn.
George V Hotel, Paris
1 x rucola and tomato salad
1 x ceviche de crabe
1 x chicken linguine
1 x Pepsi One
1 x grapefruit juice
1 x mineral water
2 x coffee
Total: €136
