Forbes pulibshed their latest World’s Billionaires Ranking. What stroke me the most was the dropping out of most of Kuwait’s billionaires. In 2010, there is only one Kuwaiti (family) ranked, Al-Khorafi. But in the previous three years (2007-2009), Kuwait had three more people in the list, which are Qutaiba and Bassam Al Ghanim, and Mohammed Al Bahar.
My question is were these people that much affected by the financial crisis? And why did their wealth suffer in the year of the recovery (2009) rather than the year when the markets and the global economy were hit the most (2008)? I guess the Al Ghanim brothers were seriously hit by the Gulf Bank losses. But what about Mr. Al-Bahar? Why did the NBK’s Chairman’s wealth fall in 2009, a year when most markets witnessed substantial returns? NBK’s stock appreciated by more than 4% for the year. Were his other holdings hit that bad?
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Loading ...Tags: Bassam Al Ghanim, Billionaires, Financial Crisis, Forbes, Gulf Bank, Kuwait, Kuwaiti billionaires, Mohammed Al Bahar, nbk, Qutaiba Al Ghanim
Maybe M. Albahar’s holdings would not consist of NBK only!.
big parts of the wealth of these sharks comes from private holdings. mostly a family business. of course any good unethically driven business man would have 100% ownership in a private company and a majority in a public company (perferbally a bank or real estate) and use the public to lower the costs for the private……I dont think M. Albahar did that, but there are major rumors that Q&B Alghanim did that…..
Naser & his bro Jasem took that to the next level with majority ownership in so many businesses and a very influential seat in the political decision making……they define what conflict of interest really means
and of if they had ownership in developed countries’ markets, they would have been still down from 08, even with rebound from march/09
basically, we just don’t know what thier “asset allocation” is really like
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Naser Reply:
March 15th, 2010 at 11:18 am
I know that Mohammed Al Bahar’s wealth does not consist purely of NBK stock, that is why I asked the question of the magnitude of the fall of his other assets. But the private assets that I know of are construction companies, capital goods distribution (CAT), and consumer staples (Lipton Tea), so why would these businesses do poorly in 2009 compared to 2008, when theoratically during times of recovery these businesses tend to flurish?
Going to your developed markets return remark, in 2009 most of the stock markets in the world (with the exception of Kuwait, Bahrain, and some other countries) were positive (i.e. they closed the year higher than when the year started or 2008 ended). So if the so-called sharks’ wealth was heavily consintraited in developed markets, then their wealth should have went up in the 2010 ranking rather than down.
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Keynesian Reply:
March 15th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
I would have to disagree with your stereotypical statement:
“of course any good unethically driven business man”
A good businessman doesn’t have to be unethical.
As for the wealth rankings, I don’t think they are very legitimate as they are purely arbitrary. The reason folks such as Al-Shaya are not on the list is because most of their holdings are private and hard to estimate without them reporting to Forbes (which I guess they don’t want, need, or care about). Most of the billionaires who make it to the list have their wealth in easily quantifiable publicly-listed shares.
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Bo6air Reply:
March 16th, 2010 at 1:49 am
I was being sarcastic…
the good businessman would have to be Ethical….but there are so many rotten apples around that makes me think the whole box, except a few, are rotten
and you are very right on the valuation of private holdings
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thats what we know, surely there are others that we don’t know. which makes valuation these a major guess game
i mis-stated: meant of the tops of ‘08. But you are right, presumbly they value the positions at the end of they year…so they should ve been up if allocation was mainly to public markets. unless he was in the worest performing markets.
But how does forbes value the positions if they are unpublicized? myabe the answer is in the mythodology of valuation
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