Any claim about the House of Saud networth should come with a warning: there is no reliable way to measure it. The ruling family of Saudi Arabia is believed to be extremely wealthy, but the line between personal property and state assets is not publicly documented, and nobody outside the family knows the true total.
The House of Saud networth: why the figure cannot be checked
In most countries, a monarch’s finances are separate from the state’s, and some of them publish accounts. In Saudi Arabia, the royal family does not release details of its private assets, and the country’s oil revenues are managed by the government and by state-owned bodies. As a result, any single number for the family’s wealth, including the very large ones that circulate online, is speculation.
What has been reported
The King’s wealth
In 2015, Bloomberg estimated that the personal fortune of King Salman and his immediate family could be in the tens of billions of dollars, with a figure of around 17 billion dollars cited, while noting the difficulty of separating state and private assets. Later outlets repeated or adjusted that number.
Individual princes
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who runs the investment company Kingdom Holding, has been listed by Forbes as a billionaire for years, with his fortune estimated in the range of 15 to 20 billion dollars in recent lists. His assets include stakes in companies such as Four Seasons and Twitter before it was bought, which he reinvested.
Purchases that made headlines
Press reports have described the purchase of a French chateau, a yacht and a painting believed to be Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, bought for 450 million dollars in 2017 through an intermediary linked to a Saudi prince. These purchases give some idea of scale, but they do not tell you the total.
The Public Investment Fund
Separate from the family is the Public Investment Fund, the state’s sovereign wealth vehicle, which reports assets in the range of hundreds of billions of dollars, with figures near 900 billion dollars reported in recent years. It is owned by the state, not the family, though the Crown Prince chairs it. It has invested in sports, technology and entertainment, including LIV Golf, Newcastle United and a number of large companies. This is the money that sometimes gets mixed up with royal wealth in headlines.
The 2017 anti-corruption campaign
In November 2017, the authorities detained a number of princes, ministers and businessmen at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh in what was described as an anti-corruption drive. The government said that it had recovered over 100 billion dollars through settlements. The numbers came from official statements and have not been independently confirmed, but they show how large the sums involved can be.
Why estimates exaggerate
Some figures count the whole oil industry, or the entire sovereign fund, as if it belonged to the family. Others assume that every prince holds the maximum wealth. Neither is a good practice. A responsible estimate separates the personal wealth of the family, the state’s assets and the companies that are partly owned by princes.
How to write about it responsibly
Use language such as “the royal family is believed to be very wealthy, but the figure cannot be verified”. If you quote a number, name the source and the year, and say that it is an estimate.
Questions people ask
Is the Saudi king the richest person in the world?
No major ranking lists him, because his wealth cannot be verified.
Does the royal family own the oil company?
Aramco is majority-owned by the state, and a small share was listed on the stock exchange in 2019.
Where can I read about it?
Reports from Bloomberg, Forbes and the Financial Times discuss the topic in depth.
The difficulty for researchers
Journalists who try to estimate royal wealth have to deal with a lack of documents, the overlap between public and private property and the reluctance of sources to speak. Some of the better work uses indirect evidence such as property records in Europe and the United States, ownership registers of companies, and court cases. Even those findings cover only a fraction of the whole, and the rest is guesswork. This is why reputable lists such as Forbes’ do not rank the king or the family, and why the wealth of Gulf rulers appears in articles as an unverified estimate. If you meet a statement that gives a precise trillion-dollar number, check whether it comes from a named study.
A note on reading estimates
Numbers about a royal family are repeated so often that an old figure can start to look like a fact. Name the source, give the year and describe the figure as an estimate or as a company-reported number. That keeps your writing accurate when the next report arrives.
*General information, not financial advice. Figures are reported estimates and unverified.*
More like this: browse our Net Worth section. For background, see the Wikipedia entry.
