Prince Alwaleed 'Severs Ties' With Forbes Billionaire List — Claims Bias Against Mid-east Investors

 Mr. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal 

Today Forbes came out with its latest billionaires list.

After the publication of the 2013 edition, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal has informed the publication that he would no longer like to be included (thank-you-very-much).

According to a press release from the Prince's investment firm, Kingdom Holding Company, he sent a letter to Steve Forbes severing his relationship with the list. That means Forbes will no longer receive information from Kingdom about its finances.

Kingdom claims that it has discovered "what appear to be intentional biases and inconsistencies in the Forbes valuation process..."

From the press release:

Shadi Sanbar, CFO of Kingdom Holding explained, “We have worked very openly with the Forbes team over the years and have on multiple occasions pointed out problems with their methodology that need correction. However, after several years of our efforts to correct mistakes falling on deaf ears, we have decided that Forbes has no intention of improving the accuracy of their valuation of our holdings and we have made the decision to move on. KHC puts a premium on tracking the true value of our investments and it is contrary to both our practice and nature to assist in the publication of financial information we know to be false and inaccurate.”

This year Kingdom says it found four glaring errors/inconsistencies in Forbes' reporting (from the press release):

• A sudden refusal after six years to accept share values as listed by the Tadawul – Saudi Arabia’s fully regulated, 21st century, high-tech stock exchange that services the largest economy in the Middle East and is a member of the World Federation of Exchanges.
• A completely unsupported and biased allegation based on rumors that stock manipulation “is the national sport” in Saudi Arabia because “there are no casinos.”
• The application of differing standards of proof for different individuals and organizations resulting in an arbitrary and confusing set of standards that seems demonstrably biased against the Middle East. For example, the valuations of other emerging markets such as the Mexican stock exchange are accepted while those of the Tadawul are not.
• Unexplained and purely arbitrary discounts applied to holdings not backed up by brokerage statements when pre-IPO investments such as those in Twitter and China’s 360Buy would not appear on any brokerage statement, and after impressing on Forbes that KHC’s investments are covered by confidentiality agreements.

The real killer here is at the end of the release where Kingdom says that it will continue to work with Forbes' rival list, the Bloomberg Billionaires List, since they " use a more accurate method of calculating financial holdings."

Brutal.

Forbes responded to these allegations in an e-mail to Business Insider saying, "Prince Alwaleed has issued a press release in response to fact-checking questions from Forbes. For our 27th annual Billionaires ranking, released today, Forbes has listed Alwaleed at $20 billion, which is $2 billion more than what he was listed at last year but $9.6 billion less than he claims he is worth. Forbes has been investigating the prince’s finances for several years, and will detail its findings in a feature story in the magazine, which will be released online tomorrow morning."

Check out some screenshots of Kingdom's press release below:

Kingdom Holding Company

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/alwaaleed-dumps-forbes-billionaire-list-2013-3#ixzz2MkEM79Sw