Bloomberg has just issued a report entitled “Saudi Prince
Who Wooed West Finds Few Friends in Tough Times” which is a report about how Prince Alwaleed, the billionaire investor who
is the single largest shareholder in Citigroup, is now finding himself without
friends, now that he’s been arrested on charges of corruption. The Bloomberg
report can be read at:
What makes this
report interesting is the fact that if the Saudi Royal Family has a hero in the
Western world, it’s Prince Alwaleed. While the Prince did not get start with
nothing, he is the only Saudi Prince who has been known to have made something
of his stipend through his own brains and industry. He took the risk of
investing in what was then known as Citicorp when its shares were at an all
time low. The investment in Citicorp has grown more than ten times since the
company merged with Travelers to become Citigroup and that’s not all. The Prince
has also made successful investments in companies like Twitter and Lyft among
others.
As well as being a
successful investor, the Prince is also as close as the West has to someone who
shares their values in Saudi Arabia. Women who work at Kingdom Holdings were
known to have been allowed to go without a veil in the office and he most
famously hired a female pilot in a country where women have only just been
given the right to drive.
When you think of
everything that Prince Alwaleed has achieved, you have to wonder why not many
people have uttered a sound at his sudden imprisonment on 4 November 2017.
The simple reason is
this; Prince Alwaleed got onto the wrong side of his cousin, the current Crown
Prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, better know by his initials MBS. While Alwaleed
may have been the darling of the Western media and the western business community,
MBS had something far more valuable – controls of the levers of real power. While
the rise of MBS has been sudden, nobody doubts that MBS will the first king
from the grandchildren of Saudi Arabia’s founding father, King Abdul Aziz Bin
Abdul Rahmad Al Saud.
Simply put – power
trumps money. While having money often brings one great power (for example nobody
screws with Li-Ka-Shing in Hong Kong), the two are in actual fact separate
items. I should know, I’m from an ethnic group living in a part of the world
where people of my ethnic group have money but live fear from the people with
power. The people with the power can always get hold of the power while the
people with the money don’t always have the power. I live in Singapore where
one doesn’t mess with the family of Lee Kuan Yew because this is the family
with the power. By contrast, I can afford to be less polite about Wee Chow Yaw,
the former head of UOB Bank. The reason is simple, the late Mr. Lee and his
family have influence on the government and thus over just about everything in
Singapore that I need for my basic survival. While Mr. Wee has power due to his
vast wealth, he doesn’t affect my life if I don’t work for him.
Furthermore, friendships in business tend to be dominated by
self-interest. When you need someone, you tend to be nice to them and helping
them out often depends on self-interest. When someone with greater influence
comes along, you tend to find that the people whom you thought were your
friends, start jumping ship.
I think of Susan Lim case, which I helped out on. Dr. Lim
was a star surgeon to the rich and famous. She’s married to Deepak Sharma, the
former Chairman of Citi’s Private Bank. Between them, they had more money than
most could dream about and the rich and powerful clamoured to be their friends.
Then, it all broke down. The powerful no longer came knocking at their door. The
reason was simple. The Singapore Government was given a choice between her and Mr.
Sharma and the Sultan of Brunei. The government chose the Sultan of Brunei.
Likewise, for Prince Alwaleed. The boardrooms of the West
would salivate at the thought of an investment from Prince Alwaleed. But when
given a choice between Alwaleed who had money and some princely influence and MBS
who has the power of the entire Saudi Government and its influence in the
Muslim world (Saudi Arabia is Custodian of the Holy Mosque of Islam), the cold-hard-power
calculations point towards not risking the prospect of offending MBS.
What are the lessons to be learnt? I guess the key is to recognize
where the power lies and understand what your friends will or will not do for
you. There is such a thing as not asking your friends to stick out their necks
for you so that they do remain your friends.
Then there’s the importance of cementing your relationships
to something stronger than money. If a relationship is based merely on money,
you’ll find the party running when a better offer is made. It’s especially common
when you see Westerners finding love with much younger Asian girls. The Westerner
really believes that the girl loves him for him. Suddenly, when a better offer
appears she dumps him and he’s heart broken. I’m not casting aspersions on
West-East relationships but it’s a common site in this part of the world where
you see normally intelligent Westerners losing themselves to girls who are
obviously in the business.
Prince Alwaleed has found this out the hard way. He has lots
of money and now he’s found his friends in the West have found someone who has
something more desirable.
You need money to get things moving. You need friends to do
things. Its often said that the two go hand in hand. However, if money is all
there is to a friendship, you may find yourself losing a friendship when the
money is not longer there. It’s a basic fact that many of us forget until it is
too late.
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