Born in 1949, Khalid bin Mahfouz is the second son of Salem bin Mahfouz, an illiterate money changer who rose to become the founder of the first and now the biggest bank in Saudi Arabia, the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia (NCB). Khalid is best known for inheriting his father’s huge holding in NCB 20 years ago.
In 1997 he sold a 20.7% stake of NCB for US$1.8bn to a group of private investors. In 1999 he sold a further 50% of the family’s holding to the Saudi Public Ownership Fund and in late 2002 the family sold its remaining stake to the same fund.
Khalid now runs a Jeddah-based global investment group with his sons and retains significant holdings in various real estate development and other companies inside and outside Saudi Arabia, including Capital Investment Holdings of Bahrain. His umbrella of investments includes an interest in Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications Company in the UAE. He is also an investor in the Nasdaq-listed US-based satellite radio pioneer Worldspace.
Two years ago Mahfouz he won a court battle to clear his name of any association with terrorism, when an English High Court Judgment found that author Rachel Ehrenfeld and publisher Bonus Books made defamatory statements about him and his sons.
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