Kuwait Inc.'s Foreign Investments Historically

In a March 7, 1988 article, titled “Kuwait’s Money Machine Comes Out Buying,” Business Week observed that “since gaining full independence from Britain in 1961, Kuwait has built up a huge blue-chip portfolio” of foreign stocks and bonds and that this foreign investment portfolio “may now be worth upwards of $200 billion.” (Collectively, the richest 400 people in the United States were also worth around $200 billion in 1988, according to Louis Rukeyser’s Business Almanac).

Twenty-five percent of Kuwait Inc.’s $200 billion in foreign investments was privately-owned by Kuwaiti businessmen in 1988. Seventy-five percent of Kuwait Inc.’s foreign investment assets were owned in 1988 by the government of Kuwait Inc., which is controlled by the Al-Sabah royal family. But, according to the Aug. 6, 1990 issue of Business Week, “no outsider can know for sure where the Al-Sabahs’ assets end and the government’s begin.”

(Downtown 1/23/91)

Next: Kuwait Inc.’s Political System Of “Sabahcracy” In 1990