(BLOOMBERG) — Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal’s investment firm sold a stake valued at almost $190 million in News Corp., reducing its holding in Rupert Murdoch’s media company to about 1 percent.
Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding cut its ownership of Class B shares to 2 million from 13.2 million, or 6.6 percent, it said in a statement to the Saudi bourse Wednesday. The sale generated 705 million riyals ($188 million), which will be used for other investments, it said. Through Kingdom, Prince Alwaleed holds stakes in companies including Citigroup Inc. and Twitter Inc.
Alwaleed, who had the second-largest holding of voting stock in News Corp. after the Murdoch family, has been a staunch ally of the media baron. He publicly supported the family’s running of News Corp. amid phone-hacking revelations in 2011 that saw the New York-based company abandon its bid to take over the rest of European pay-TV operator Sky Plc.