Anybody hear Michael Moore on Stern this morning?

Whoa, that's so supremely fucking incorrect, it's unbelievable.

xpost you fucs

maybe you could argue that the bin Laden group owns these funds, but I have a hard time believing they would disclose their financials, esp. to Moore.

Just wanted to drop you a line to inform you that we own Disney. Also, apple pie. Thanks, k bye,

The Saudis.

And the name he said it was under was something American sounding. So it's probably indirect, and Yahoo!Finance wouldn't have it I don't think.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The multibillionaire bailed out the Paris resort once -- his help is
needed again.

By Richard Verrier
Sentinel Staff Writer

January 26, 2004

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- The Walt Disney Co. needs a real-life prince.

His name is Alwaleed bin Talal. His grandfather was Saudi Arabia's
founding monarch. With huge stakes in companies ranging from Citigroup Inc.
to the Four Seasons luxury-hotel chain, he is one of the planet's
richest men.

That's why Disney needs him. The company's Paris resort is suffering
severe losses. Alwaleed came to the rescue once before and is being
courted once again.

The relationship between Disney and the prince is one of the most
unlikely in the corporate world. Disney is notoriously insular and fiercely
protective of its brand and its image as America's premier
family-entertainment company. The prince is outspoken and ostentatious, a man whose
nationality alone attracts controversy these days.

A month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he found himself
at the center of a tabloid dust-up with then-New York City Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani. The mayor rejected Alwaleed's $10 million contribution to a
victims fund after Alwaleed suggested U.S. policies in the Middle East
were partly to blame for the attacks.

But the coupling of Disney and Alwaleed is not about personalities or
nationalities. As Disney Chairman Michael Eisner recently said, in a bit
of understatement, Alwaleed "has a pretty sophisticated understanding
of capitalism."

In the mid-1990s, the prince chipped in $300 million to help keep Euro
Disney afloat. Now, Eisner would like another helping of his largess.

Disneyland Paris and its new sister park, Walt Disney Studios, have
been ravaged by recession and a dramatic decline in global tourism
triggered by the terror attacks. Executives of the resort, which includes
seven hotels, have said that it could soon default on a series of loans
unless it restructures its debt of $2 billion. The prince's original
investment has lost a third of its value.

Today, Eisner and Alwaleed are scheduled to meet at Disney headquarters
in Burbank, Calif., to discuss Euro Disney's future, among other
things.

"We faced crisis No. 1. Now we have to face crisis No. 2," Alwaleed,
48, said in a recent interview at his ranch near Riyadh. "In my latest
telephone call with Mr. Eisner, we agreed on one thing: This time the
problems of Euro Disney will have to be resolved once and for all."

'God has blessed me'

Last year, Forbes magazine ranked Alwaleed the fifth-richest person in
the world with a net worth of nearly $18 billion.

His Kingdom Holding Co. spans four continents. It has held major stakes
in companies such as Apple Computer, News Corp., Fairmont Hotels and
fashion retailer Saks Fifth Ave.

On his desk sits a Mickey Mouse figurine facing two model jets. The
prince owns three real ones, including a 747. That's on top of his
317-room castle -- with a bowling alley -- in Riyadh and a 288-foot yacht once
owned by Donald Trump. He calls the boat "Kingdom."

"God has blessed me with so many things," says Alwaleed, a slightly
built man who speaks in rapid-fire sentences.

His windowless office has eight television monitors, two of them always
tuned to his favorite news and business channels, CNN and CNBC. On the
wall behind his desk are his "hundred wives" -- plaques bearing the
corporate logos of his various investments.

Alwaleed says he sleeps five hours a day, which gives him more time for
long walks in the desert or for working out.

"I play 31 sports," he says. "I'm good at all of them."

Alwaleed's parents were considered palace outsiders. His father, Prince
Talal bin Abdul-Aziz, raised eyebrows in Saudi's staunchly conservative
society when he married outside the ruling family, choosing the
daughter of Lebanon's first prime minister. At one point, Alwaleed's father
disavowed the royal family, moved to Egypt and declared his support for
its anti-monarchist government. He returned to Saudi Arabia and made a
fortune in construction and real estate.

Like his father, the prince left home, too -- for an education in
America.

"I don't think I ever saw somebody who worked so hard," said Carlos
Lopez, who served as Alwaleed's academic adviser at Menlo College near
Palo Alto, Calif., where the undergraduate business program is popular
among Saudi royals. "He was at the top of his class."

After earning a master's degree from Syracuse University, Alwaleed
started building a kingdom of his own.

With help from his father, the prince began buying and selling Saudi
real estate. Before long, he was forming partnerships to land lucrative
construction contracts during the oil boom of the 1970s. Alwaleed is
said to have received millions in commissions often paid by foreign
companies to princes and other influential Saudis when doing business in the
tightly controlled monarchy.

His specialty is investing in struggling brand-name companies whose
shares can be purchased for a bargain.

In 1991, Alwaleed bought a $590 million stake in Citigroup, then called
Citicorp, effectively bailing out the financial-services giant. The
investment, he said, has increased in value 16-fold.

"He's a good guy to have on your side," said Citigroup Chairman Sandy
Weill, who has dealt extensively with Alwaleed.

Like other foreign investors, Alwaleed was drawn to the glamour and
opportunities of the entertainment world. This led to some high-profile
flops, including a $30 million investment in the Planet Hollywood
restaurant chain and a movie-production company with pop star Michael Jackson
that never got off the ground.

French sensitivities

In 1993, a Wall Street financier named Steve Norris approached the
prince with a proposition. The prince had worked with Norris on the
Citicorp deal and had hired him to shop for something new. Norris dropped the
Disney name.

The idea of a European theme park took off after the successful 1983
launch of Tokyo Disneyland. The only question: where to build.

Some top executives favored Spain because of its warm climate. Eisner
preferred France, citing government cooperation and his fond memories of
vacations in Paris.

Hungry for the 14,000 jobs and tourism revenue Disney would bring, the
French sold the company 4,400 acres of parkland at a discount, provided
a low-interest loan and agreed to extend the Paris Metro to the site 20
miles east of Paris.

Disney invested $100 million for a 49 percent stake in a new publicly
traded company, with the rest owned by bankers and investors. Disney was
also guaranteed a steady stream of royalty and management fees in a
complex arrangement to operate the park and hotels for the new company,
Euro Disney.

The project, which opened in April 1992, cost more than $3 billion and
was Disney's most lavish resort. The hotels, boasting more than 5,000
rooms, were designed by such famed architects as Michael Graves and
Robert Stern. There were dozens of restaurants and an entertainment village
called Festival Disney.

But Disney's American executives badly misjudged French sensitivities.

One faux pas was banning wine inside the park. Another was failing to
appreciate the French tradition of lunch from noon to 2 p.m. The
restaurants were too small to accommodate the crush.

Disney did make some cultural concessions: The turret atop Sleeping
Beauty's Castle was changed to reflect 15th century French design, rather
than the Bavarian style of Disneyland. But French intellectuals
expressed horror at an American cultural invasion. One critic famously branded
the park a "cultural Chernobyl."

In response, Disney slashed prices and lifted the ban on wine, among
other steps. But the company was powerless to affect larger economic
forces. The park opened in the midst of a recession. French and Italian
tourists stayed home.

Euro Disney shares plunged on the Paris stock market. The impact was so
severe that its American parent, Walt Disney Co., reported its first
quarterly loss in nine years. Bankruptcy loomed for the park.

Well-heeled investor

In Burbank, Disney's chief financial officer, Richard Nanula, was
trying figure a way out of the quagmire in 1993 when he got a call from his
former colleague, Norris, who was looking for new place to put the
prince's money.

"I've got somebody who'd like to invest," he said.

Alwaleed spent months negotiating with Eisner and Nanula, culminating
with a conference call in the dead of night in the Saudi desert.

The prince, camped in a tent, had been distributing food to Bedouin
tribesman during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. As always, his
encampment included a fleet of sport utility vehicles and a mobile
communications truck equipped with computers, fax machines and a satellite phone.

The 3 a.m. call started awkwardly. The prince's phone connection
crashed several times and Eisner, unaccustomed to royal courtesies, balked at
using the prince's official title, "Royal Highness."

Ultimately, Alwaleed took a 24 percent stake in Euro Disney, valued at
about $300 million, making him the second-largest shareholder behind
parent company Disney, which reduced its ownership to 39 percent.

"He knew what he was doing," Eisner said of the prince. "He's smart."

Disney's relationship with Alwaleed benefited the company in ways that
transcended his investment. He became a kind of diplomat for Disney in
the tricky politics of the Middle East.

In 1999, controversy erupted at Disney's Epcot theme park in Orlando
because of an Israeli government exhibit that offended some Arab and
Muslim groups. The Arab League called a meeting at the United Nations to
discuss a Disney boycott.

But the league backed off at the behest of Alwaleed and other
influential Saudi royals working behind the scenes.

Alwaleed said that once Eisner assured him that "Disney has no
religion," he contacted Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"I told him, 'It's not worth it. If you boycott Disney, this will be
seen as Mickey Mouse,' " Alwaleed recalled.

Of course, a boycott of Disney also would have hurt Alwaleed's economic
interests, just when things were looking up.

Tourism soars, plummets

By then, Euro Disney had become the most successful tourism business in
Europe. The turnaround was helped by a new marketing plan, admissions
discounts and a broader range of food concessions. The name was changed
to Disneyland Resort Paris.

Encouraged, Disney executives decided to build a second park outside
Paris, Walt Disney Studios, in the hope that guests would stay in the
area longer and spend more on food and gifts. Such a multi-park strategy
had been hugely successful for Walt Disney World.

Then came Sept. 11. The global tourism market crashed.

When Walt Disney Studios opened in March 2002, it was Euro Disney
redux; the expected crowds did not come.

Disney executives said the park was victimized not only by the travel
slump but by subsequent events such as the war in Iraq, the outbreak of
SARS, harsh weather and a series of transportation strikes. Analysts
cited another factor: high admission prices. The park cost the same as
Euro Disney, but had only eight major attractions, compared with 45 at
its sister park.

To give its subsidiary some breathing room, the Walt Disney Co. last
year decided to forgo millions of dollars in its royalty and management
fees from the French resort. It also provided another $50 million in
back-up financing.

Disney executives hope the measures, along with an advertising blitz,
will buy Euro Disney time to restructure its debt and allow the company
to press the prince for help.

"We don't have a product problem," Eisner said. "We have a problem that
stems from opening a park in a recession."

'I believe in it'

At his ranch outside Riyadh, Alwaleed is relaxing at sunset, sitting in
a deck chair in front of a shimmering fountain. The patio overlooks the
farm where he grows date palms and keeps gazelles and ostriches.

Three striking women in Western attire stand nearby with pots of
coffee, ready to refill the prince's cup. One of two big-screen TVs is
broadcasting a music video by American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson.

The prince is reading a column in the International Herald Tribune.
It's about him. He had recently called on Saudis to accelerate social,
political and economic reforms after a terrorist bombing in Riyadh that
killed nearly 20 people.

"I sincerely wish to bridge the gap between Arabs and Americans," he
tells a visitor. "It's a role that no one else has in the Arab world."

More immediately, the prince is pondering how he can help Disney -- and
himself.

Among his options, Alwaleed could increase his ownership stake in Euro
Disney, gaining more control -- even though his original investment has
dwindled by more than $100 million. He could also try to buy some of
Disney's hotels in France -- which would appeal to the prince, insiders
say, because he could grab some plum assets at a discount.

Alwaleed may also bring up with Eisner the possibility of adding a Four
Seasons to the roster of hotels at Walt Disney World.

Investors are closely following his moves. When Alwaleed met last fall
in Paris with Euro Disney management, the stock shot up nearly 9
percent on speculation that he was going to finance a bailout.

"Everyone is watching what his next step is doing to be," said analyst
Tristan d'Aboville of the brokerage firm Aurel Leven. "The prince has
to find a solution and find it rapidly."

Although the prince is coy about his plans, he says he his not going to
turn his back on the other kingdom in his life.

"I'm not very happy," he said. "But I will stay with it because I
believe in it."

Richard Verrier can be reached at [email protected] or
1-800-528-4637, Ext. 77936.

Copyright (c) 2004, Orlando Sentinel | Get home delivery - up to 50%
off

Visit OrlandoSentinel.com

According to Disney's 2003 annual report, it only owns 39% of Euro Disney S.C.A., which operates the Disneyland Resort Paris. http://disney.go.com/corporate/investors/financials/annual/2003/f/pdf_popup.html

Investor information at Euro Disney SCA lists Prince Alwaleed as a 16.3% stakeholder. http://www.eurodisney.com/index.php?idPage=11385&lng=en

From Forbes: Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud , 46 , self made
Source: investments
Net Worth: $17.7 bil
Country of citizenship: Saudi Arabia
Marital Status: married , 2 children
Menlo College, Bachelor of Arts / Science
Syracuse University, Masters of Science

I assume that those articles have some way of confirming this, because I'm not even sure how or in what format European companies disclose their financial statements. EuroDisney is traded on a number of European exchanges.

Anyway, I don't see what's so wrong with Saudi Investment in Europe or the U.S. or anywhere else. It's not like Americans and Europeans don't invest heavily in S.A.

EURODISNEY'S WEBSITE LISTS THIS INFORMATION

yeah, no shit, Momus.
-- hstencil (hstenc!...), June 25th, 2004.

That's not true at all. I heard him say so. Just because he did a film about life in Flint doesn't mean he's some sort of isolationist.

That's just a bunch of stereotyping, perpetuated by people who never have and never will deal with the effects of downsizing.

:(

well I wish you would realize that ownership stakes in a company doesn't mean you run a company. And that foreign investment is a good thing.

That's not true at all. I heard him say so. Just because he did a film about life in Flint doesn't mean he's some sort of isolationist.

Check his comments about GM's Mexican factories in Roger & Me.

That's just a bunch of stereotyping, perpetuated by people who never have and never will deal with the effects of downsizing.

I was "downsized" from my last job, so fuck you very much. And that was last year, Bank of America's laying off 12K this year.

1. Almost all manufacturing has left Brooklyn because of what, exactly?

2. Don't blame me because I practice birth control.

Among his options, Alwaleed could increase his ownership stake in Euro
Disney, gaining more control -- even though his original investment has
dwindled by more than $100 million. He could also try to buy some of
Disney's hotels in France -- which would appeal to the prince, insiders
say, because he could grab some plum assets at a discount.

Alwaleed may also bring up with Eisner the possibility of adding a Four
Seasons to the roster of hotels at Walt Disney World.

Investors are closely following his moves. When Alwaleed met last fall
in Paris with Euro Disney management, the stock shot up nearly 9
percent on speculation that he was going to finance a bailout.

"Everyone is watching what his next step is doing to be," said analyst
Tristan d'Aboville of the brokerage firm Aurel Leven. "The prince has
to find a solution and find it rapidly."

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002O6V.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

He's a national socialist!

I snorted, anyway. (Thereby providing work for some poor Columbians.)

By the way, that "you" wasn't you, Momus. Just a general. A "vous," if you like.

Pashmina, I was deliberately evoking a sort of bizarre hybrid image. In electronic space everything is metaphorical, and all the metaphors get mixed up. For instance, why do 'windows' spring up from a 'desktop'? We take these absurdities for granted, but it's fun sometimes to play around with them.

"This is what I haven't been able to say on televison, or anywhere: The Saudi Royal family owns 23 percent of Euro Disney." He then goes on to talk about Prince Wallee or however it's spelled, I don't know because LIKE THIS FIRST HALF OF THIS THREAD WAS DISAPPEARED.

So a Saudi invested in Euro Disney, So what.

And Ed the only reason I even bring it up is because of what happened upthread, in case you weren't paying attention

Exactly what in Fahrenheit 9/11 is dangerous?

It's also all over alt.binaries.howard-stern

You veterans may think this is sarcasm, but it isn't. I was introduced to ILM almost two months ago and now I know why I haven't forgotten about it and left like all other message boards. I was bored at work and simply brought up what was on my mind...and it turned into this. How great is that!!?

Which hasn't stopped them from attacking Al Franken anyway. Based on the early criticism I was expecting that the Saudi airline flights and the prisoner footage would be a major part of the movie and they actually weren't.

as far as not making watertight arguments goes, hey it's politics; if a Republican wants to criticize his movie the only effective way to do it is to make another movie ((c) Godard) and I don't think the Repubs have either the ambition, or the material, or the know-how to make a movie that can match him

Arguments that are not watrtight inevitably backfire. Look how bad Micheal Howard was stung last week over his waiting list claims which a 30 second phone call could have fixed. I like the man but the message often seems to be less important than him.

I wish this was me trying to make a joke.

Why do I have a feeling that somewhere out there in the cyberrealm there is some moderate Republican message board where these exact sentiments are being expressed about George W. Bush?

There have been incredible lines to see the film at the theater in my neighborhood (which is admittedly a rather liberal 'hood) all weekend long, starting early Friday. They've not yet let up through the weekend. If this movie mobilizes people that are sick of this administration to get out to the polls in anything like the numbers they are going out to see the film, I'll be thrilled.

Ed because no one wants to go see a long Newsnight doc at the theatre

Again, if it rallies the otherwise apathetic or startles the unquestioning at least into a state of mild alertness, so much the better.

http://www.efilmcritic.com/feature.php?feature=1150

Please pass it on.