Saturday, February 28, 2009

Am I supposed to cry?

"For the prince, whose net worth was most recently estimated by Forbes at $21 billion, the new government action is just his latest investment setback. Early this year, his company, Kingdom Holdings, reported a $7.9 billion loss as some of his biggest portfolio investments, like the News Corporation, Time Warner and Songbird Estates, which manages the Canary Wharf office development in London, have plummeted. He has suffered further indignity at home, where the share price of Kingdom has lost more than half its value since the company went public on the Saudi stock exchange in July 2007. The Abu Dhabi authority, like all global investors, has also been hit by the world economic downturn, as well as lower oil prices — and it has tended to have a much larger position in equities, especially those in emerging markets, than other funds. Brad W. Setser, an analyst at the Council of Foreign Relations, estimates that the Abu Dhabi fund lost more than 30 percent last year, bringing its size down to about $300 billion from a peak of $480 billion — a figure that is much lower than some of the larger public estimates and one that executives within the authority acknowledge is closer to the truth.""