Kingdom Holding sells Riyadh land worth $80m

Kingdom Holding, the investment vehicle owned by Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has sold a 1m sqm plot of land just outside Riyadh for US$80m.

The sale, which was announced on the Saudi stock exchange, resulted in a profit of US$49m, Kingdom said.

The land, which is east of the Saudi capital, was bought by Subul Development Co, a Jeddah-based development company owned by MK Group, a family of companies run by the Khashoggi family.

It is the second piece of land bought by Subul from Kingdom in the last three months. The developer bought a 970,000 sqm patch of land in the same area for US$66.7m in October.

Kingdom’s third quarter net income rose 21.7 percent, compared to the same quarter a year ago, despite the firm’s hospitality division suffering as a result of the Arab Spring.

“The increase in net income for the third quarter is due to income of real estate investments, dividends from investments in financial markets, improvement of performance from associate companies and reversal of impairment loss,” the Riyadh-based firm said in a statement to the Saudi Stock Exchange.

Kingdom Holding owns stakes in a wide range of global companies including News Corporation, Citibank, Twitter, Four Seasons Hotels, the Savoy Hotel in London, Disneyland Paris, Apple and George V Hotel in Paris.

The company is also backing development of the Kingdom City project in Jeddah, which will include Kingdom Tower, the tallest building in the world when complete.