Hope everyone is doing well. Found this snippet the other day from the 12/6 Fortune, p.118. Guess I should call it "Prince Alwaleed disses Globalstar"
pathfinder.com
Excerpts:
Not that the prince hasn't had issues with
Motorola. They come up when I ask him
about his 15% stake in Teledesic (Craig
McCaw's ambitious wireless network
based on a series of satellites), which he
bought for $200 million and which is now
worth $300 million. "Teledesic is feeling
the hurt right now because of problems
with Iridium and Globalstar, which I was
offered to invest in and didn't, thank God.
Teledesic is fundamentally different
because it is broadband, the Internet in
the sky. And because it is voice and data
and possibly video. It is well financed, no
leverage, and is backed by incredible
people. Now, frankly speaking, this may
not make those people happy over at
Motorola, but Motorola was one of the
causes of the collapse of Iridium. They
made a lot of money by selling technology
to this company. They were milking it
completely. And I told [Motorola CEO
Chris] Galvin that, when he came to see
me last week."
Besides building pay-phone networks in
Syria and Saudi Arabia, Silki La Silki is also
working on a satellite network that will
blanket 99 countries in the Middle East
and Africa. But the really exciting piece of
this company could be Arabia Online (go
to arabia.com), an Arab portal. Through
Silki La Silki, the prince recently bought
50% of this business, which is run by
Ramzi Zeine, a Jordanian out of Amman,
for $1.2 million. (That's million.) |
