Etihad Etisalat, the Saudi Arabian phone company that’s lost about US$9 billion of its market value in the four months after the discovery of accounting errors, said its chief executive officer has been discharged.
Khalid Omar Al Kaf’s removal is effective February 24, the Riyadh-based phone operator known as Mobily said in a statement today. The company reserves its “rights to revert against him”, it said, without giving more information. The executive had submitted his resignation on February 21, the company said.
Mr Al Kaf had been suspended since November as the company’s audit committee investigated the errors, which prompted Saudi Arabia’s market regulator to start a probe to determine if Mobily violated rules. The telecoms company reported a fourth-quarter loss of 2.3 billion riyals (Dh2.25bn) after a profit of 2 billion riyals a year earlier.
The company also said yesterday it appointed Suliman bin Abdulrahman Al-Gwaiz as chairman after Abdulaziz Saleh Al Saghyir resigned because of “health reasons”. Deputy chief executive Serkan Okandan had been in charge since Mr Al Kaf’s suspension.
Mobily’s market value plunged to 27.1 billion riyals as of yesterday, from 61.6 billion riyals on October 30 when the shares were halted. The stock has lost 20 per cent this year and closed at 35.21 riyals in Riyadh yesterday.
Mobily said today it won’t pay dividend for the fourth quarter.
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Five famous companies founded by teens
There are numerous success stories of teen businesses that were created in college dorm rooms and other modest circumstances. Below are some of the most recognisable names in the industry:
- Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg and his friends started Facebook when he was a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate.
- Dell: When Michael Dell was an undergraduate student at Texas University in 1984, he started upgrading computers for profit. He starting working full-time on his business when he was 19. Eventually, his company became the Dell Computer Corporation and then Dell Inc.
- Subway: Fred DeLuca opened the first Subway restaurant when he was 17. In 1965, Mr DeLuca needed extra money for college, so he decided to open his own business. Peter Buck, a family friend, lent him $1,000 and together, they opened Pete’s Super Submarines. A few years later, the company was rebranded and called Subway.
- Mashable: In 2005, Pete Cashmore created Mashable in Scotland when he was a teenager. The site was then a technology blog. Over the next few decades, Mr Cashmore has turned Mashable into a global media company.
- Oculus VR: Palmer Luckey founded Oculus VR in June 2012, when he was 19. In August that year, Oculus launched its Kickstarter campaign and raised more than $1 million in three days. Facebook bought Oculus for $2 billion two years later.