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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (34956)	11/3/2000 12:25:27 PM
From: Logain Ablar	Respond to of 50167

Thanks Ike: With ATML also look @ SSTI. Same space. Flash sector has been beaten down and it too will come back (famous last words <gg>). On the election I just meant short term the CSCO news is much more importan with the market. In reading the FON news as much as they lowered guidance cap ex spending is increasing and this should bode well for CAMP and CSCO. Tim

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (34956)	11/3/2000 1:16:25 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Even the smartest of the investors make mistakes.. excerpts from a story that I wrote for a newspaper in Gulf Arabia on Prince Walid style of invesmtents..thought it might interest few.. The new desert Warren Buffet who likes the old and the new economy.. No one else has a better grip on global investments than Prince Walid, he is the new breed of investors who have brought to the art of investments new definition to divergence of interests. He is invested in media, entertainment, banks and industry along with Internet and farming his new passion. Globally known as a ‘Disney Prince’ for his timely investments in Euro Disney that saved the Euro Disney from a definite closure. This time with the new economy his ‘timing of investments in companies facing perilous situation’ has not been very accurate. Unlike the huge stake in Citi bank at 9$ that set the stage for a big investment career the Prince has temporarily stumbled in the new economy stocks picks. He entered the Internet market in May right at the top when many other major institutions in Middle East erroneously decided to launch the Internet funds right at the top of the market. The most well known investor of the region Prince Walid, a nephew of Saudi King Fahd, built his fortune, estimated at 17 billion dollars, from an initial gift of 30,000 dollars from his father and a 300,000 dollars loan from Citibank, using his house as collateral. The 43-year-old prince, who is ranked as the world's eighth wealthiest entrepreneur by Forbes magazine, built his global financial empire by investing in major companies experiencing hard times. Saudi Prince al-Walid ben Talal recently invested over US$1 billion in fifteen US companies. The Prince, who is said to be the tenth richest man in the world, mostly bought Internet stocks such as eBay or Amazon. He also acquired shares in telecom companies AT&T and MCI Worldcom, as well as in consumer products companies. He also announced recently that he is doubling his investments in AOL. The recent set backs in internet market has reduced his internet portfolio by 800 million $’s, his investment in Apple computers that nearly quadrupled was cut to half when Apple announced a slow down in growth. His recent investment of 1.4 billion $ in new economy stocks are seriously hit by the huge selling of the internet stocks in US. For example he had agreed to invest 50 million dollars in priceline.com, the Internet service provider. Under the terms of the investment, Prince Walid purchased from priceline.com founder Jay S Walker a forward contract to buy two million shares of priceline.com common stock at 25 dollars a share, for an aggregate purchase price of 50 million dollars, the forward agreement entitled Prince Walid to title to the priceline.com shares no earlier than September 8, 2001 and no later than September 8, 2002, prior to which Walker will retain voting control and record ownership of the shares." This investment and others like Amazon, AOL by the Saudi billionaire are part of his over one-billion-dollar purchase of stock in 15 "new and old economies" last May. "Total Internet investments for the Prince's benefits have to date exceeded 1.4 billion dollars in value, the priceline.com, an e-commerce service that offers discounts on everything from groceries to gasoline, home mortgages to hotel rooms and air tickets to new cars, currently has a total customer base of nearly seven million share price was trading at 4$ after a bad quarterly report. These set backs are ordinary for the Prince who sits on net assets of 17 billion $’s and has wider interests in old economy stocks too. He owns banks, hotels like George 5 in Paris recently renovated at a cost of 180 million$’s. Internet investments are a small part of the invesmtents he made a big decision to invest over $2 billion in Egypt in farming. From Internet to farming is field that not many global investors would like to traverse. The Egyptian cabinet would have Gamal Abdel Nasser turning in his grave. It agreed to allocate one of the largest plots of land in the New Valley to a Saudi Arabian prince. Prince Al Walid bin Talal bin Abdel Aziz, 40, was given 435,000 feddans (one feddan is about one acre) to construct an agricultural project with a total value close to $2 billion. He is the first foreigner to invest in Egypt's New Valley project, which will increase its agricultural land from 5.5 to 30 percent of its area in 25 years, according to official sources. The project, called Agricultural Kingdom, would be launched "soon" and both Arabs and non-Arabs would be able to take part. Abdel Aziz told the Saudi-owned daily that his objective was to reclaim, cultivate and develop land in the Southern Valley areas. The Egyptian government will provide the pumping station, which will be built on Lake Nasser. Internet investing is the most speculative whereas farming on the other most real. Prince Walid by mixing the two is entering in new realm of the investment world.