Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim

Waleed Al Ibrahim was born in 1962 and raised in Saudi Arabia. He has eight brothers. Two of his elder brothers, Abdulaziz and Khalid, are businessmen investing in real estate in the U.S. His sister, Al Jawhara Al Ibrahim, was one of at least thirteen wives of King Fahd. Another, Maha Al Ibrahim, married the former deputy minister of defence and aviation, Prince Abdul Rahman, full-brother of King Fahd. His third sister, Mohdi Al Ibrahim, is the spouse of the former Saudi minister of higher education, Khaled Al Angari.

Al Ibrahim received education in Oregon, USA, during the 1980s and completed his higher education there.

ARAvision

After completing his university education, Al Ibrahim founded the ARA Productions and Television Studios (ARAvision) in Saudi Arabia. It was his first enterprise in media. Later, it was called ARA Group International, becoming a media conglomerate that is made up of several radio and television companies airing the whole Arab world.

His company, ARAvision, was registered in Riyadh in 1995. The company was provided with an exclusive licence to deliver a wireless cable service to major cities in the Kingdom. Therefore, it was able to screen the satellite channels' content before being broadcast.

Middle East Broadcasting Company (MBC)

Al Ibrahim founded MBC in London in 1991 with the late entrepreneur, Saleh Kamel, launching the first independent Arabic satellite TV station. The company was established to express the views of Saudi royal family. It is part of the ARAvision. The MBC acquired United Press International in 1992 that was bankrupt at that time for $3.95 million to bolster its news-gathering scope.

Subsequently, the station introduced several movie and Arabic TV series channels including MBC 2, MBC 3 and MBC 4. Later, two more channels were launched. One of them is MBC Persia, broadcasting Hollywood films with Persian subtitles, and the other one is MBC Action, airing action movies. The MBC Bollywood was launched in 2013.

Al Ibrahim also launched Al Arabiya in February 2003 with the aim of providing an alternative to Al Jazeera. His goal for Al Arabiya was to position it as the CNN to Al Jazeera's Fox News. Through this position, Al Arabiya was thought to be a TV channel that is calm, cool, professional, providing objective reporting rather than for extremely emphasized opinions.

Although Al Ibrahim is widely known as the owner of the MBC, it is reported that fifty percent of the MBC profits were owned by King Fahd's youngest son and his nephew, Abdulaziz bin Fahd. It is further reported that Prince Abdulaziz dealt with both the profits and ideology of the MBC Channels, including Al Arabiya.

Family investments

In 1990, the wealth of his brothers, Abdulaziz Al Ibrahim and Khalid Al Ibrahim, was reported to have been US$1.0 billion. It was argued that they made their wealth through being Boeing and Rolls-Royce representatives in Saudi deals. Their wealth was reported to have been US$1.2 billion in 1991. They had real estate investments in the US, including Marina del Rey in Los Angeles, a property near Disney World, and a hotel next to the Mayo Clinic. They also invested in Orlando real estate.

On 4 November 2017, Al Ibrahim was detained in Saudi Arabia in a corruption crackdown conducted by a new royal anti-corruption committee. Al Ibrahim was held at Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton hotel.

Over the weekend of 26–27 January 2018, Al Ibrahim was released along with at least half a dozen other prominent Saudi businessmen detained in the probe, after being found innocent of any wrongdoing.

In May 2018, Saudi Arabian authorities allowed Al Ibrahim to leave the Kingdom for the first time since November 2017 to chair a strategy meeting at the headquarters of MBC Group in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Al Ibrahim had been required to remain inside the Kingdom as the government finalised arrangements to take a controlling 60 percent stake in MBC.

Following the meeting, the MBC Group released a statement, with Al Ibrahim quoted as saying: “The coming stage shall witness MBC Group’s entry into new markets and sectors, in various fields, with the group shifting a greater focus towards Saudi Arabia and neighbouring regions, in line with the current transformational positive changes occurring in the Kingdom.”