Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a major investor in Citigroup, urged the US federal government to sell its ownership stake in Citigroup as soon as possible in order to boost investor confidence. Alwaleed made the statement in a recent interview with Emerging Markets magazine. “The earlier the US government exits its investments in those companies, the better,” as long as the withdrawal is not done in a manner that hurts the prices of US financial stocks, Alwaleed was quoted as saying in an interview published on Sunday. “We need to give confidence back to the shareholders and investors that these companies are moving along without government support,” he added. After Citigroup received a series of cash injections during the financial crisis, the US federal government ended up with a 34 percent stake in Citigroup, after the bank received $45 billion in funds from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Citigroup has been in talks with officials from the Treasury department about how the government should wind-down its ownership of the 7.7 billion shares in the bank. As of July 2007, Kingdom Holding Co, owned by Alwaleed, has a 3.6 percent stake in the Citigroup.
