Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal has invested 1 billion riyals (Dh979.3 million) into music streaming company Deezer, his first deal since being detained last year in an anti-corruption crackdown.
The prince’s Kingdom Holding investment vehicle and his media company Rotana Group have bought new shares in Deezer, according to a statement from Alwaleed’s office on Thursday. Deezer will also get access to Rotana’s audio and video content as part of the deal.
The investment marks a return to deal-making for the prince, who began the year confined to the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh, which had been transformed into a prison for suspects in a graft probe.
Alwaleed was the most prominent among hundreds of Saudi businessmen, officials and princes who were swept up in November and detained in the Ritz-Carlton in what the authorities called a crackdown on corruption. He was released in January after signing a “confirmed understanding” with Saudi authorities, he told Bloomberg in March. Signing the document left him free to function normally with "zero guilt" and "zero conditions."
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The last investment made by Alwaleed, who is ranked the 61st richest man and has a fortune of $16.8b (Dh61.7b), was the acquisition of a 16.2 per cent stake in Banque Saudi Fransi from Credit Agricole SA in September. Since his release, he has restarted talks with banks for a loan of at least $1b to fund new deals, and said he was considering spinning off some of the $13b in assets held by Kingdom Holding, potentially into a real estate investment trust.
Deezer abandoned an initial public offering in 2015 before raising 100 million euros in private equity in 2016.