Twitter boss Jack Dorsey gets backing of Saudi prince as he doubles stake

A Saudi prince has become Twitter's second-largest shareholder after doubling his stake in the social media firm.

Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal took his total holding to 34.9 million shares, accounting for roughly 5% of Twitter's stock, after the microblogging site confirmed co-founder Jack Dorsey would become its permanent chief executive.

Prince Al-Waleed invested both personal funds and via the Kingdom Holding Company sovereign wealth fund.

Evan Williams, Dorsey’s co-founder, remains its largest individual shareholder.

The prince invested $300m (£196m) in Twitter in 2011 before it listed in New York but the increased stake, approximately 4 million shares, comes as a surprise: he stated in an interview with the Financial Times in June that he opposed the permanent appointment of Dorsey.

He told the paper that Dorsey should concentrate on running Square, the mobile credit card transaction business he also founded, which has filed for an initial public offering later this year.

Dorsey will run Twitter on a full-time basis while simultaneously holding the chief executive position at Square. He has been running Twitter on an interim basis since Dick Costolo resigned in June.

Neither of Dorsey’s previous stints as chief executive and executive chairman at Twitter were considered a great success for the company – he was unceremoniously ousted from the chief executive role after 18 months.

Twitter is attempting to revive its flagging business by launching a new retail platform and is thought to be considering changing its 140-character tweet limit.