title: Hereditary peer

text: The law applicable to a British hereditary peerage depends on which Kingdom it belongs to. Peerages of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom follow English law; the difference between them is that peerages of England were created before the Act of Union 1707, peerages of Great Britain between 1707 and the Union with Ireland in 1800, and peerages of the United Kingdom since 1800. Irish peerages follow the law of the Kingdom of Ireland, which is very much similar to English law, except in referring to the Irish Parliament and Irish officials, generally no longer appointed; no Irish peers have been created since 1898, and they have no part in the present governance of the United Kingdom. Scottish peerage law is generally similar to English law, but differs in innumerable points of detail, often being more similar to medieval practice.


title: Hereditary peer

text: Women are ineligible to succeed to the majority of English, Irish, and British hereditary peerages, but may inherit certain English baronies by writ and Scottish peerages in the absence of a male heir.


title: Hereditary peer

text: The ranks of the peerage in most of the United Kingdom are, in descending order of rank, duke, marquess, earl, viscount and baron; the female equivalents are duchess, marchioness, countess, viscountess and baroness respectively. Women typically do not hold hereditary titles in their own right, except for certain peerages in the peerage of Scotland. One significant change to the status quo in England was in 1532 when Henry VIII created the Marquess of Pembroke title for his soon-to-be wife, Anne Boleyn; she held this title in her own right and was therefore ennobled with the same rank as a male viscount.


title: Hereditary peer

text: In the Scottish peerage, the lowest rank is "lordship of Parliament", the male holder thereof being known as a lord of Parliament. A Scottish "barony" is a feudal rank, and not of the Peerage. The barony by tenure or feudal barony in England and Wales was similar to a Scottish feudal barony, in being hereditary, but is long obsolete, the last full summons of the English feudal barons to military service having occurred in 1327. The Tenures Abolition Act 1660 finally quashed any remaining doubt as to their continued status.


title: Hereditary peer

text: Peerage dignities are created by the sovereign by either writs of summons or letters patent. Under modern constitutional conventions, no peerage dignity, with the possible exception of those given to members of the royal family, would be created if not upon the advice of the prime minister.


title: Hereditary peer

text: Many peers hold more than one hereditary title; for example, the same individual may be a duke, a marquess, an earl, a viscount, and a baron by virtue of different peerages. If such a person is entitled to sit in the House of Lords, he still only has one vote. However, until the House of Lords Act 1999 it was possible for one of the peer's subsidiary titles to be passed to his heir before his death by means of a writ of acceleration, in which case the peer and his heir would have one vote each. Where this is not done, the heir may still use one of the father's subsidiary titles as a "courtesy title", but he is not considered a peer.


title: Hereditary peer

text: The mode of inheritance of a hereditary peerage is determined by the method of its creation. Titles may be created by writ of summons or by letters patent. The former is merely a summons of an individual to Parliament and does not explicitly confer a peerage; descent is always to the heirs of the body, male and female. The latter method explicitly creates a peerage and names the dignity in question. Letters patent may state the course of descent; usually, this is only to male heirs, but by a special remainder other descents can be specified. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 regulates acquired gender and provides that acquiring a new gender under the Act does not affect the descent of any peerage.


title: Hereditary peer

text: A child is deemed to be legitimate if its parents are married at the time of its birth or marry later; only legitimate children may succeed to a title, and furthermore, an English, Irish, or British (but not Scottish) peerage can only be inherited by a child born legitimate, not legitimated by a later marriage.


title: Hereditary peer

text: Normally, a peerage passes to the next holder on the death of the previous holder. However, Edward IV introduced a procedure known as a writ of acceleration, whereby it was possible for the eldest son of a peer holding more than one peerage to sit in the House of Lords by virtue of one of his father's subsidiary dignities.


title: Hereditary peer

text: A person who is a possible heir to a peerage is said to be "in remainder". A title becomes "extinct" (an opposite to "extant", alive) when all possible heirs (as provided by the letters patent) have died out; i.e., there is nobody in remainder at the death of the holder. A title becomes "dormant" if nobody has claimed the title, or if no claim has been satisfactorily proven. A title goes into "abeyance" if there is more than one person equally entitled to be the holder.


title: Hereditary peer

text: In the past, peerages were sometimes "forfeit" or "attainted" under Acts of Parliament, most often as the result of treason on the part of the holder. The blood of an attainted peer was considered "corrupted", consequently his or her descendants could not inherit the title. If all descendants of the attainted peer were to die out, however, then an heir from another branch of the family not affected by the attainder could take the title. The Forfeiture Act 1870 abolished corruption of blood; instead of losing the peerage, a peer convicted of treason would be disqualified from sitting in Parliament for the period of imprisonment.


title: Hereditary peer

text: The Titles Deprivation Act 1917 permitted the Crown to "suspend" peerages if their holders had fought against the United Kingdom during the First World War. Guilt was to be determined by a committee of the Privy Council; either House of Parliament could reject the committee's report within 40 days of its presentation. In 1919, King George V issued an Order in Council suspending the Dukedom of Albany (together with its subsidiary peerages, the Earldom of Clarence and the Barony of Arklow), the Dukedom of Cumberland and Teviotdale (along with the Earldom of Armagh) and the Viscountcy of Taaffe (along with the Barony of Ballymote). Under the Titles Deprivation Act, the successors to the peerages may petition the Crown for a reinstatement of the titles; so far, none of them has chosen to do so (the Taaffe and Ballymote peerages would have become extinct in 1967).


title: Hereditary peer

text: Nothing prevents a British peerage from being held by a foreign citizen (although such peers cannot sit in the House of Lords, while the term "foreign" does not include Irish or Commonwealth citizens). Several descendants of George III were British peers and German subjects; the Lords Fairfax of Cameron were American citizens for several generations.


title: Hereditary peer

text: A peer may also "disclaim" a hereditary peerage under the Peerage Act 1963. To do so, the peer must deliver an instrument of disclaimer to the Lord Chancellor within 12 months of succeeding to the peerage, or, if under the age of 21 at the time of succession, within 12 months of becoming 21 years old. If, at the time of succession, the peer is a member of the House of Commons, then the instrument must be delivered within one month of succession; meanwhile, the peer may not sit or vote in the House of Commons. Prior to the House of Lords Act 1999, a hereditary peer could not disclaim a peerage after having applied for a writ of summons to Parliament; now, however, hereditary peers do not have the automatic right to a writ of summons to the House. Irish peerages may not be disclaimed. A peer who disclaims the peerage loses all titles, rights and privileges associated with the peerage; his wife or her husband is similarly affected. No further hereditary peerages may be conferred upon the person, but life peerages may be. The peerage remains without a holder until the death of the peer making the disclaimer, when it descends normally.


title: Hereditary peer

text: A title held by someone who becomes monarch is said to "merge in the Crown" and therefore ceases to exist, because the sovereign cannot hold a dignity from himself.


title: Hereditary peer

text: The Dukedoms of Cornwall and of Rothesay, and the Earldom of Carrick, are special cases, which when not in use are said to "lapse to the Crown": they are construed as existing, but held by no one, during such periods. These peerages are also special in that they are never directly inherited. The Dukedom of Cornwall was held formerly by the eldest son of the King of England, and the Dukedom of Rothesay, the Earldom of Carrick, and certain non-peerage titles (Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland) by the eldest son of the King of Scotland. Since those titles have been united, the dukedoms and associated subsidiary titles are held by the eldest son of the monarch. In Scotland, the title "Duke of Rothesay" is used for life. In England and Northern Ireland, the title "Duke of Cornwall" is used until the heir apparent is created Prince of Wales; at the same time as the principality is created, the duke is also created Earl of Chester. The earldom is a special case, because it is not hereditary, instead revesting or merging in the Crown if the prince succeeds to the Crown or predeceases the monarch: thus George III (then the grandson of the reigning monarch) was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester a month after the death of his father Frederick, Prince of Wales.


title: Hereditary peer

text: The Dukedom of Cornwall is associated with the Duchy of Cornwall; the former is a peerage dignity, while the latter is an estate held by the Duke of Cornwall. Income from the Duchy goes to the Duke of Cornwall, or, when there is no duke, to the sovereign (but the money is then paid to the heir to the throne under the Sovereign Grant Act 2011).


title: Hereditary peer

text: The only other duchy in the United Kingdom is the Duchy of Lancaster, which is also an estate rather than a peerage dignity. The Dukedom of Lancaster merged in the Crown when Henry of Monmouth, Duke of Lancaster became King Henry V. Nonetheless, the "Duchy" of Lancaster continues to exist, theoretically run by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (which is normally a sinecure position with no actual duties related to the duchy and is used to appoint a minister without portfolio). The Duchy of Lancaster is the inherited property that belongs personally to the monarch, rather than to the Crown. Thus, while income from the Crown Estate is turned over to the Exchequer in return for a Sovereign grant payment, the income from the duchy forms a part of the Privy Purse, the personal funds of the Sovereign.


title: Hereditary peer

text: At the beginning of each new parliament, each peer who has established his or her right to attend Parliament is issued a writ of summons. Without the writ, no peer may sit or vote in Parliament. The form of writs of summons has changed little over the centuries. It is established precedent that the sovereign may not deny writs of summons to qualified peers.


title: Hereditary peer

text: By modern English law, if a writ of summons was issued to a person who was not a peer, that person took his seat in Parliament, and the parliament was a parliament in the modern sense (including representatives of the Commons), that single writ created a barony, a perpetual peerage inheritable by male-preference primogeniture. This was not medieval practice, and it is doubtful whether any writ was ever issued with the intent of creating such a peerage. The last instance of a man being summoned by writ without already holding a peerage was under the early Tudors; the first clear decision that a single writ (as opposed to a long succession of writs) created a peerage was in Lord Abergavenny's case of 1610. The House of Lords Act 1999 also renders it doubtful that such a writ would now create a peer if one were now issued; however, this doctrine is applied retrospectively: if it can be shown that a writ "was" issued, that the recipient sat and that the council in question was a parliament, the Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords determines who is now entitled to the peerage as though modern law had always applied. Several such long-lost baronies were claimed in the 19th and 20th centuries, though the committee was not consistent on what constituted proof of a writ, what constituted proof of sitting, and which 13th-century assemblages were actually parliaments. Even a writ issued in error is held to create a peerage unless the writ was cancelled before the recipient took his seat; the cancellation was performed by the now obsolete writ of "supersedeas".


title: Hereditary peer

text: Peerages created by writ of summons are presumed to be inheritable only by the recipient's "heirs of the body." The House of Lords has settled such a presumption in several cases, including "Lord Grey's Case" (1640) Cro Cas 601, the "Clifton Barony Case" (1673), the "Vaux Peerage Case" (1837) 5 Cl & Fin 526, the "Braye Peerage Case" (1839) 6 Cl & Fin 757 and the "Hastings Peerage Case" (1841) 8 Cl & Fin 144. The meaning of "heir of the body" is determined by common law. Essentially, descent is by the rules of male primogeniture, a mechanism whereby normally, male descendants of the peer take precedence over female descendants, with children representing their deceased ancestors, and wherein the senior line of descent always takes precedence over the junior line per each gender. These rules, however, are amended by the proviso whereby sisters (and their heirs) are considered co-heirs; seniority of the line is irrelevant when succession is through a female line. In other words, no woman inherits because she is older than her sisters. If all of the co-heirs but one die, then the surviving co-heir succeeds to the title. Otherwise, the title remains abeyant until the sovereign "terminates" the abeyance in favour of one of the co-heirs. The termination of an abeyance is entirely at the discretion of the Crown.


title: Hereditary peer

text: A writ of acceleration is a type of writ of summons that enables the eldest son of a peer to attend the House of Lords using one of his father's subsidiary titles. The title is strictly not inherited by the eldest son, however; it remains vested in the father. A writ may be granted only if the title being accelerated is a subsidiary one, and not the main title, and if the beneficiary of the writ is the heir-apparent of the actual holder of the title. A total of ninety-four writs of acceleration have been issued since Edward IV issued the first one, including four writs issued in the twentieth century. The only individual who recently sat in the House of Lords by writ of acceleration is Viscount Cranborne in 1992, through the Barony of Cecil which was actually being held by his father, the Marquess of Salisbury. (Viscount Cranborne succeeded to the marquessate on the death of his father in 2003.)


title: Hereditary peer

text: There are no Scottish peerages created by writ; neither can Scottish baronies go into abeyance, for Scots law does not hold sisters as equal heirs regardless of age. Furthermore, there is only one extant barony by writ in the Peerage of Ireland, that of La Poer, now held by the Marquess of Waterford. (Certain other baronies were originally created by writ but later confirmed by letters patent.)


title: Hereditary peer

text: More often, letters patent are used to create peerages. Letters patent must explicitly name the recipient of the title and specify the course of descent; the exact meaning of the term is determined by common law. For remainders in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, the most common wording is "to have and to hold unto him and the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten and to be begotten". Where the letters patent specifies the peer's "heirs male of the body" as successors, the rules of agnatic succession apply, meaning that succession is through the male line only. Some very old titles, like the Earldom of Arlington, may pass to "heirs of the body" (not just heirs-male), these follow the same rules of descent as do baronies by writ and seem able to fall into abeyance as well. Many Scottish titles allow for passage to "heirs general of the body", in which case the rules of male primogeniture apply; they do not fall into abeyance, as under Scots law, sisters are not treated as equal co-heirs. English and British letters patent that do not specify a course of descent are invalid, though the same is not true for the letters patent creating peers in the Peerage of Scotland. The House of Lords has ruled in certain cases that when the course of descent is not specified, or when the letters patent are lost, the title descends to heirs-male.


title: Hereditary peer

text: It is generally necessary for English patents to include limitation to heirs "of the body", unless a special remainder is specified (see below). The limitation indicates that only lineal descendants of the original peer may succeed to the peerage. In some very rare instances, the limitation was left out. In the "Devon Peerage Case" (1831) 2 Dow & Cl 200, the House of Lords permitted an heir who was a collateral descendant of the original peer to take his seat. The precedent, however, was reversed in 1859, when the House of Lords decided in the "Wiltes Peerage Case" (1869) LR 4 HL 126 that a patent that did not include the words "of the body" would be held void.


title: Hereditary peer

text: It is possible for a patent to allow for succession by someone other than an heir-male or heir of the body, under a so-called special remainder. Several instances may be cited: the Barony of Nelson (to an elder brother and his heirs-male), the Earldom of Roberts (to a daughter and her heirs-male), the Barony of Amherst (to a nephew and his heirs-male) and the Dukedom of Dover (to a younger son and his heirs-male while the eldest son is still alive). In many cases, at the time of the grant the proposed peer in question had no sons, nor any prospect of producing any, and the special remainder was made to allow remembrance of his personal honour to continue after his death and to preclude an otherwise certain rapid extinction of the peerage. However, in all cases the course of descent specified in the patent must be known in common law. For instance, the Crown may not make a "shifting limitation" in the letters patent; in other words, the patent may not vest the peerage in an individual and then, before that person's death, shift the title to another person. The doctrine was established in the "Buckhurst Peerage Case" (1876) 2 App Cas 1, in which the House of Lords deemed invalid the clause intended to keep the Barony of Buckhurst separate from the Earldom of De La Warr (the invalidation of clause may not affect the validity of the letters patent itself). The patent stipulated that if the holder of the barony should ever inherit the earldom, then he would be deprived of the barony, which would instead pass to the next successor as if the deprived holder had died without issue.


title: Hereditary peer

text: Letters patent are not absolute; they may be amended or revoked by Act of Parliament. For example, Parliament amended the letters patent creating the Dukedom of Marlborough in 1706. The patent originally provided that the dukedom could be inherited by the heirs-male of the body of the first duke, Captain-General Sir John Churchill. One son had died in infancy and the other died in 1703 from smallpox. Under Parliament's amendment to the patent, designed to allow the famous general's honour to survive after his death, the dukedom was allowed to pass to the Duke's daughters; Lady Henrietta, the Countess of Sunderland, the Countess of Bridgewater and Lady Mary and their heirs-male - and thereafter "to all and every other the issue male and female, lineally descending of or from the said Duke of Marlborough, in such manner and for such estate as the same are before limited to the before-mentioned issue of the said Duke, it being intended that the said honours shall continue, remain, and be invested in all the issue of the said Duke, so long as any such issue male or female shall continue, and be held by them severally and successively in manner and form aforesaid, the elder and the descendants of every elder issue to be preferred before the younger of such issue."


title: Hereditary peer

text: The number of peers has varied considerably with time. At the end of the Wars of the Roses, which killed many peers, and degraded or attainted many others, there were only 29 Lords Temporal; but the population of England was also much . The Tudors doubled the number of Peers, creating many but executing others; at the death of Queen Elizabeth I, there were 59.


title: Hereditary peer

text: The number of peers then grew under the Stuarts and all later monarchs. By the time of Queen Anne's death in 1714, there were 168 peers. In 1712, Queen Anne was called upon to create 12 peers in one day in order to pass a government measure, more than Queen Elizabeth I had created during a 45-year reign.


title: Hereditary peer

text: Several peers were alarmed at the rapid increase in the size of the Peerage, fearing that their individual importance and power would decrease as the number of peers increased. Therefore, in 1719, a bill was introduced in the House of Lords to place a limitation on the Crown's power. It sought to permit no more than six new creations, and thereafter one new creation for each other title that became extinct. But it did allow the Crown to bestow titles on members of the Royal Family without any such limitation. The Bill was rejected in its final stage in the Lords, but it was passed in the Lords when it was reintroduced in the next year. Nonetheless, the House of Commons rejected the Peerage Bill by 269 to 177.


title: Hereditary peer

text: George III was especially profuse with the creation of titles, mainly due to the desire of some of his Prime Ministers to obtain a majority in the House of Lords. During his 12 years in power, Lord North had about 30 new peerages created. During William Pitt the Younger's 17-year tenure, over 140 new peerages were awarded.


title: Hereditary peer

text: A restriction on the creation of peerages, but only in the Peerage of Ireland, was enacted under the Acts of Union 1800 that combined Ireland and Great Britain into the United Kingdom in 1801. New creations were restricted to a maximum of one new Irish peerage for every three existing Irish peerages that became extinct, excluding those held concurrently with an English or British peerage; only if the total number of Irish peers dropped below 100 could the Sovereign create one new Irish peerage for each extinction.


title: Hereditary peer

text: There were no restrictions on creations in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. The Peerage continued to swell through the 19th century. In the 20th century, there were even more creations, as Prime Ministers were again eager to secure majorities in the House of Lords. Peerages were handed out not to honour the recipient but to give him a seat in the House of Lords.


title: Hereditary peer

text: Since the start of the Labour government of Harold Wilson in 1964, the practice of granting hereditary peerages has largely ceased (except for members of the royal family). Only seven hereditary peers have been created since 1965: four in the royal family (the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex, the Duke of Cambridge, and the Duke of Sussex) and three additional creations under Margaret Thatcher's government (the Viscount Whitelaw [had four daughters], the Viscount Tonypandy [had no issue] and the Earl of Stockton [with issue]). The two viscounts died without male heirs, extinguishing their titles. Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton received the earldom customarily bestowed on former prime ministers after they retired from the House of Commons. The practice of granting hereditary titles (usually earldoms) to male commoners who married into the royal family appears to have also ended. The last such peerage was offered to Captain Mark Phillips, who declined. The most recent to accept was the Earl of Snowdon.


title: Hereditary peer

text: There is no statute that prevents the creation of new hereditary peerages; they may technically be created at any time, and the government continues to maintain pro forma letters patent for their creation. The most recent policies outlining the creation of new peerages, the Royal Warrant of 2004, explicitly apply to both hereditary and life peers. However, successive governments have largely disowned the practice, and the Royal Household website currently describes the King as the fount of honour for "life peerages, knighthoods and gallantry awards", with no mention of hereditary titles.


title: Hereditary peer

text: Until the coming into force of the Peerage Act 1963, peers could not disclaim their peerage in order to sit in the House of Commons, and thus a peerage was sometimes seen as an impediment to a future political career. The law changed due to an agreement that the Labour MP Tony Benn having been deprived of his seat due to an inadvertent inheritance was undemocratic; and the desire of the Conservatives to put their choice of prime minister (ultimately Alec Douglas-Home) into the House of Commons, which by that time was deemed politically necessary.


title: Hereditary peer

text: In 1999, the House of Lords Act abolished the automatic right of hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords. Out of about 750 hereditary peers, only 92 may sit in the House of Lords. The Act provides that 90 of those 92 seats are to be elected by other members of the House: 15 by vote of the whole house (including life peers), 42 by the Conservative hereditary peers, two by the Labour hereditary peers, three by the Liberal Democrat hereditary peers, and 28 by the crossbench hereditary peers. Elections were held in October and November 1999 to choose those initial 90 peers, with all hereditary peers eligible to vote. Hereditary peers elected hold their seats until their death, resignation or exclusion for non-attendance (the latter two means introduced by the House of Lords Reform Act 2014), at which point by-elections are held to maintain the number at 92.


title: Hereditary peer

text: The remaining two hold their seats by right of the hereditary offices of Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain. These offices are hereditary in themselves, and in recent times have been held by the Dukes of Norfolk and the Barons Carrington respectively. These are the only two hereditary peers whose right to sit is automatic.


title: Hereditary peer

text: The Government reserves a number of political and ceremonial positions for hereditary peers. To encourage hereditary peers in the House of Lords to follow the party line, a number of lords-in-waiting (government whips) are usually hereditary peers. This practice was not adhered to by the Labour government of 1997–2010 due to the small number of Labour hereditary peers in the House of Lords.


title: Hereditary peer

text: The peerage has traditionally been associated with high gentry, the British nobility, and in recent times, the Conservative Party. Only a tiny proportion of wealthy people are peers, but the peerage includes a few of the very wealthiest, such as Hugh Grosvenor (the Duke of Westminster) and Lord Salisbury. A few peers own one or more of England's largest estates passed down through inheritance, particularly those with medieval roots: until the late 19th century the dominant English and Scottish land division on death was primogeniture.


title: Hereditary peer

text: However, the proliferation of peerage creations in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century resulted in even minor political figures entering the ranks of the peerage; these included newspaper owners (e.g. Alfred Harmsworth) and trade union leaders (e.g. Walter Citrine). As a result, there are many hereditary peers who have taken up careers which do not fit traditional conceptions of aristocracy. For example, Arup Kumar Sinha, 6th Baron Sinha is a computer technician working for a travel agency; Matt Ridley, 5th Viscount Ridley, is a popular science writer; Timothy Bentinck, 12th Earl of Portland is an actor and plays David Archer in the BBC’s long-running radio soap opera, "The Archers"; and Peter St Clair-Erskine, 7th Earl of Rosslyn is a former Metropolitan Police Service Commander. The Earl of Longford was a socialist and prison reformer, while Tony Benn, who renounced his peerage as Viscount Stansgate (only for his son to reclaim the family title after his death) was a senior government minister (later a writer and orator) with left-wing policies.


title: Hereditary peer

text: As the vast majority of hereditary peerages can only be inherited by men, the number of peeresses in their own right is very small; only 18 out of 758 hereditary peers by succession, or 2.2%, were female, as of 1992.


title: Hereditary peer

text: All female hereditary peers succeeding after 1980 have been to English or Scottish peerages originally created before 1700. Of the over 600 hereditary peerages created since 1900, only ten could be inherited by daughters of the original recipient, and none can be inherited by granddaughters or higher-order female descendants of the original recipient. The 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma was the last woman to hold such a post-1900 title from 1979 until her death in 2017.


title: Hereditary peer

text: From 1963 (when female hereditary peers were allowed to enter the House of Lords) to 1999, there has been a total of 25 female hereditary peers.


title: Hereditary peer

text: Of those 92 currently sitting in the House of Lords, none are female, since the retirement of Margaret of Mar, 31st Countess of Mar in 2020. Originally there were five female peers elected under the House of Lords Act 1999 (all of them Crossbenchers), but all of these have since died or resigned, and no female has won a by-election to a vacant Lords seat since 1999.


title: Hereditary peer

text: A single female peer, the 29th Baroness Dacre, is listed in the "Register of Hereditary Peers" among about 200 male peers as willing to stand in by-elections, as of October 2020.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: Robert John Gaudio (born November 17, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer, and the keyboardist and backing vocalist of the pop/rock band the Four Seasons. Gaudio wrote or co-wrote and produced the vast majority of the band's music, including hits like "Sherry" and "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)". Though he no longer performs with the group, Gaudio and lead singer Frankie Valli remain co-owners of the Four Seasons brand.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: Born in the Bronx, New York, Gaudio was raised in Bergenfield, New Jersey, where he attended Bergenfield High School. His mother worked for the publishing house Prentice Hall and his father in a paper factory. He showed an interest in music and studied piano with Sal Mosca.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: He grew up in more comfortable middle-class surroundings than the other members of the Four Seasons, which caused some tension and differences early on. He was a cerebral person, interested in reading and learning. He stayed out of trouble and had a mild manner, which proved useful during negotiations throughout his career.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: He rose to musical fame at the age of 15 as a member of The Royal Teens, for whom he co-wrote the hit "Short Shorts". In 1958, while he and the group were promoting the single, they met Frankie Valli and his group the Four Lovers as they prepared to perform on a local television program. Wearying of touring, Gaudio left the Royal Teens soon afterward, and the group subsequently dissolved.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: One year after he ceased touring, Gaudio joined the Four Lovers. While commercial success was elusive, the group was kept busy with session work (with Bob Crewe as the producer), and a string of performances at night clubs and lounges.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: In 1960, after a failed audition at a bowling establishment in Union Township, called the "4 Seasons", songwriter/pianist Gaudio shook hands with lead singer Valli and formed the Four Seasons Partnership, and Gaudio, Valli, Tommy DeVito, and Nick Massi became The Four Seasons.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: Gaudio wrote the Seasons' first No. 1 hit, "Sherry", 15 minutes before a group rehearsal in 1962. With producer Bob Crewe often assisting with lyrics, Gaudio wrote a string of subsequent hits for the Seasons, including "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Walk Like a Man", "Dawn (Go Away)", "Ronnie", "Rag Doll", "Save It for Me", "Big Man in Town", "Bye Bye Baby", "Girl Come Running", "Beggin'", and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" (the first big success under Valli's name as a solo performer). Crewe/Gaudio compositions also became major hits for other artists, including the Tremeloes ("Silence Is Golden", originally the B-side of the Four Seasons' "Rag Doll"), The Osmonds ("The Proud One", originally recorded as a Valli solo single) and the Walker Brothers ("The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore", another Valli single).


title: Bob Gaudio

text: After the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album was released in June 1967, Gaudio saw the pop music market changing, and sought to position the Four Seasons into the trend of socially conscious music. One evening he went to the Bitter End in Greenwich Village and saw Jake Holmes performing. Gaudio was taken with Holmes' song, "Genuine Imitation Life", and decided to base a Four Seasons album upon it. With Holmes as his new lyricist, "The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette" album was released in January 1969. The album was a commercial failure and symbolized the end of the Four Seasons' first period of success. The appreciation of "The Genuine Imitation Life Gazette" has grown over the years, and it was re-released on CD (minus the newspaper cover) in the 1990s by Rhino in the U.S. and Ace in the UK. Gaudio and Holmes also wrote and produced Frank Sinatra's 1969 album "Watertown".


title: Bob Gaudio

text: In 1975 Gaudio wrote "Who Loves You" and "December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" with his future wife Judy Parker. The songs became big hits for a reconstituted Four Seasons group (only Valli was left of the original lineup; Gaudio stopped touring with them in 1971 to concentrate on writing and producing).


title: Bob Gaudio

text: Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, Frankie Valli and Nick Massi the original members of The Four Seasons were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: In addition to his work for the Seasons and Sinatra, he wrote and/or produced for Michael Jackson, Barry Manilow, Diana Ross, Eric Carmen, Nancy Sinatra, Peabo Bryson, and Roberta Flack. In particular, he produced six complete albums for Neil Diamond, and the movie soundtrack albums for Diamond's "The Jazz Singer" and "Little Shop of Horrors". Gaudio also produced the hit "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" for Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond, a duet that reached the top of "Billboard" charts in 1978, for which he received a Grammy Award nomination.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: In the 1990s Gaudio moved to Nashville and produced recordings for Canadian country artist George Fox, among others. He lured Neil Diamond to Nashville to record the album "Tennessee Moon". In recent years Gaudio has focused on musical theater, writing the music for the 2001 London West End production of "Peggy Sue Got Married".


title: Bob Gaudio

text: Gaudio was instrumental in mounting "Jersey Boys," a musical play based on the lives of the Four Seasons, which ran at the La Jolla Playhouse through January 2, 2005, and then opened on Broadway on November 6, 2005, to mostly positive reviews. In 2006, the play won four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. In 2007, it won a Grammy in the Best Musical Show Album category.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: On February 3, 2009, Gaudio received his high school diploma, 50 years after dropping out of Bergenfield High School.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: On May 12, 2012, Gaudio received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for his commitment to many humanitarian causes.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: On June 20, 2014, Warner Bros. released the film version of "Jersey Boys", directed by Clint Eastwood in which Gaudio was portrayed by Erich Bergen. In "Jersey Boys", credit is given to a then-teenaged Joe Pesci for introducing Gaudio to Tommy DeVito.


title: Bob Gaudio

text: On July 1, 2014, Rhino Entertainment released "Audio with a G", the first compilation of the music composed by Bob Gaudio as performed by the Four Seasons, Frank Sinatra, Diana Ross, The Temptations, Cher, Roberta Flack, Nina Simone, Jerry Butler, Chuck Jackson and others.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Winston Spencer-Churchill (10 October 1940 – 2 March 2010), generally known as Winston Churchill, was an English Conservative politician and a grandson of former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill. During the period of his prominence as a public figure, he was normally referred to as Winston Churchill , in order to distinguish him from his grandfather. His father Randolph Churchill was also an MP.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Churchill was born at Chequers five months after his grandfather became Prime Minister, a year into the Second World War. He was educated at Ludgrove, Harrow School and at Christ Church, Oxford. His famous grandfather died in 1965, and his father died three years afterwards.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Before becoming a Member of Parliament, he was a journalist, notably in the Middle East during the Six-Day War, during which time he met numerous Israeli politicians, including Moshe Dayan, and published a book recounting the war. During the 1960s he covered conflicts in Yemen and Borneo as well as the Vietnam War. In 1968, he visited Czechoslovakia to record the Prague Spring and when the Democratic Convention was held in the wake of public assassinations at Chicago in the same year he was attacked by the police.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: In the early 1970s at Biafra, Nigeria, he witnessed both war and famine and the indiscriminate bombing of civilians was an outrage to him. He reported in further trouble spots including Communist China, and the carnation revolution in Portugal. Like other members of his family, he began a lecture tour of the United States.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Churchill was not able to take up his grandfather's parliamentary seat at Woodford in Essex when he stepped down at the 1964 general election, three months before his death at the age of 90. However, he was at the centre of the Conservative campaign: despite being quite inexperienced in politics, he had been appointed as Edward Heath's personal assistant. Heath was already a senior cabinet minister, and the following year was elected leader of the party following the resignation of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who lost the general election to Labour and Harold Wilson.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Churchill's first attempt to enter Parliament was at the 1967 Manchester Gorton by-election. In spite of the unpopularity of the incumbent Labour government, he lost, but only by 577 votes. Winston was still a journalist with "The Daily Telegraph" when his father died in 1968; the paper's proprietor, Lord Hartwell, took the decision to employ Martin Gilbert to continue the work on the former Prime Minister's biography that Randolph had started.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Churchill became Member of Parliament for the constituency of Stretford, near Manchester, at the 1970 general election. As an MP he was a member of the parliamentary ski team and chairman of the Commons Flying Club. He became a friend of Julian Amery MP, who as Minister for Housing and Construction at the Department of the Environment, appointed him his Parliamentary Private Secretary. Churchill was not much interested in the mundane questions of housing, however, and doing as little as possible, took questions to the House from civil servants. Transferred to the Foreign Office with Amery, he became very outspoken on issues in the Middle East and on the Communist Bloc. After he attempted to question Alec Douglas-Home's abilities as Foreign Secretary, he was forced to resign in November 1973, just over three months before the Conservatives lost power to Harold Wilson's Labour Party for the second time in a decade.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Churchill resumed the family tradition of protecting Ulster Unionism, defending the Diplock Courts, internment and arguing for the death penalty for terrorists. He was part of a group of Conservative MPs of the era (including Margaret Thatcher) who were heavily critical of BBC coverage of the conflict in Northern Ireland as expressing communist sympathies, for which some journalists were sacked.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: As a frontbench spokesman on defence policy, he took a hardline on Rhodesia, voting against any sanctions. His presentation at the despatch box was strident for the times, censured by the Speaker for calling Foreign Secretary David Owen "treacherous" over the abandonment of Rhodesia. Thatcher, who succeeded Edward Heath as Conservative leader in 1975, dismissed Churchill from the front bench of politics in November 1978. However, when the Conservatives came to power in the election of May 1979 he was elected to the executive of the 1922 Committee.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Boundary changes which took effect at the 1983 general election made his seat more marginal (it was subsequently taken by the Labour Party), and he transferred to the nearby Davyhulme constituency, which he represented until the seat was abolished for the 1997 general election. Although well known by virtue of his family history, he never achieved high office and remained a backbencher. His cousin, Nicholas Soames, was first elected a Conservative MP in 1983 and remained in parliament until 2019.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: During his time as a Member of Parliament, Churchill visited Beijing with a delegation of other MPs, including Clement Freud, a grandson of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Freud asked why Churchill was given the best room in the hotel, and was told it was because Churchill was a grandson of Britain's most illustrious Prime Minister. Freud responded by saying it was the first time in his life that he had been "out-grandfathered".


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: After the 1990–91 Gulf War, Churchill visited British troops in the desert. When he introduced himself to a soldier, the soldier replied "Yes, and I'm Rommel", highlighting, as his father had told him, the comparative disadvantage in his name.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: He was the subject of controversy in 1995 when he and his family sold a large archive of his grandfather's papers for £12.5m to Churchill College, Cambridge. The purchase was funded by a grant from the newly established National Lottery.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: After leaving Parliament at the 1997 election (with his Davyhulme seat being abolished), Churchill was a sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit and wrote many articles in support of the Iraq War and the fight against Islamic terrorism. He also edited a compilation of his grandfather's famous speeches entitled "Never Give In". In 2007, he acted as a spokesman for the pressure group UK National Defence Association. He was also involved with the National Benevolent Fund for the Aged, as trustee from 1974 and chair from 1995 to 2010.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Churchill was the son of Randolph Churchill (1911–1968), the only son of Sir Winston Churchill, and his first wife Pamela Digby (1920–1997). His parents divorced in 1945. His father married June Osborne: their daughter was Arabella Churchill (1949–2007). His mother married W. Averell Harriman, former United States ambassador to the United Kingdom.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Churchill's first marriage, in July 1964, was to Mary "Minnie" Caroline d'Erlanger, the daughter of the banker Sir Gerard John Regis d'Erlanger and granddaughter of Baron Emile Beaumont d'Erlanger. The couple had four children. Churchill's second marriage, to Luce Engelen, a Belgian-born jewellery maker, lasted from 1997 until his death.


title: Winston Churchill (1940–2010)

text: Churchill lived in Belgravia, London, where he died aged 69 on 2 March 2010 from prostate cancer, from which he had suffered for the last two years of his life. On 9 March, he was buried in the family plot at St Martin’s Church in Bladon, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire.


title: Certificate authority

text: In cryptography, a certificate authority or certification authority (CA) is an entity that stores, signs, and issues digital certificates. A digital certificate certifies the ownership of a public key by the named subject of the certificate. This allows others (relying parties) to rely upon signatures or on assertions made about the private key that corresponds to the certified public key. A CA acts as a trusted third party—trusted both by the subject (owner) of the certificate and by the party relying upon the certificate. The format of these certificates is specified by the X.509 or EMV standard.


title: Certificate authority

text: One particularly common use for certificate authorities is to sign certificates used in HTTPS, the secure browsing protocol for the World Wide Web. Another common use is in issuing identity cards by national governments for use in electronically signing documents.


title: Certificate authority

text: Trusted certificates can be used to create secure connections to a server via the Internet. A certificate is essential in order to circumvent a malicious party which happens to be on the route to a target server which acts as if it were the target. Such a scenario is commonly referred to as a man-in-the-middle attack. The client uses the CA certificate to authenticate the CA signature on the server certificate, as part of the authorizations before launching a secure connection. Usually, client software—for example, browsers—include a set of trusted CA certificates. This makes sense, as many users need to trust their client software. A malicious or compromised client can skip any security check and still fool its users into believing otherwise.


title: Certificate authority

text: The clients of a CA are server supervisors who call for a certificate that their servers will bestow to users. Commercial CAs charge money to issue certificates, and their customers anticipate the CA's certificate to be contained within the majority of web browsers, so that safe connections to the certified servers work efficiently out-of-the-box. The quantity of internet browsers, other devices and applications which trust a particular certificate authority is referred to as ubiquity. Mozilla, which is a non-profit business, issues several commercial CA certificates with its products. While Mozilla developed their own policy, the CA/Browser Forum developed similar guidelines for CA trust. A single CA certificate may be shared among multiple CAs or their resellers. A "root" CA certificate may be the base to issue multiple "intermediate" CA certificates with varying validation requirements.


title: Certificate authority

text: In addition to commercial CAs, some non-profits issue publicly-trusted digital certificates without charge, for example Let's Encrypt. Some large cloud computing and web hosting companies are also publicly-trusted CAs and issue certificates to services hosted on their infrastructure, for example IBM Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Cloudflare, and Google Cloud Platform.


title: Certificate authority

text: Large organizations or government bodies may have their own PKIs (public key infrastructure), each containing their own CAs. Any site using self-signed certificates acts as its own CA.


title: Certificate authority

text: Commercial banks that issue EMV payment cards are governed by the EMV Certificate Authority, payment schemes that route payment transactions initiated at Point of Sale Terminals (POS) to a Card Issuing Bank to transfer the funds from the card holder's bank account to the payment recipient's bank account. Each payment card presents along with its card data also the Card Issuer Certificate to the POS. The Issuer Certificate is signed by EMV CA Certificate. The POS retrieves the public key of EMV CA from its storage, validates the Issuer Certificate and authenticity of the payment card before sending the payment request to the payment scheme.


title: Certificate authority

text: Browsers and other clients of sorts characteristically allow users to add or do away with CA certificates at will. While server certificates regularly last for a relatively short period, CA certificates are further extended, so, for repeatedly visited servers, it is less error-prone importing and trusting the CA issued, rather than confirm a security exemption each time the server's certificate is renewed.


title: Certificate authority

text: Less often, trustworthy certificates are used for encrypting or signing messages. CAs dispense end-user certificates too, which can be used with S/MIME. However, encryption entails the receiver's public key and, since authors and receivers of encrypted messages, apparently, know one another, the usefulness of a trusted third party remains confined to the signature verification of messages sent to public mailing lists.


title: Certificate authority

text: Worldwide, the certificate authority business is fragmented, with national or regional providers dominating their home market. This is because many uses of digital certificates, such as for legally binding digital signatures, are linked to local law, regulations, and accreditation schemes for certificate authorities.


title: Certificate authority

text: However, the market for globally trusted TLS/SSL server certificates is largely held by a small number of multinational companies. This market has significant barriers to entry due to the technical requirements. While not legally required, new providers may choose to undergo annual security audits (such as WebTrust for certificate authorities in North America and ETSI in Europe) to be included as a trusted root by a web browser or operating system.


title: Certificate authority

text: , 147 root certificates, representing 52 organizations, are trusted in the Mozilla Firefox web browser, 168 root certificates, representing 60 organizations, are trusted by macOS, and 255 root certificates, representing 101 organizations, are trusted by Microsoft Windows. As of Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), Android currently contains over 100 CAs that are updated with each release.


title: Certificate authority

text: On November 18, 2014, a group of companies and nonprofit organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla, Cisco, and Akamai, announced Let's Encrypt, a nonprofit certificate authority that provides free domain validated X.509 certificates as well as software to enable installation and maintenance of certificates. Let's Encrypt is operated by the newly formed Internet Security Research Group, a California nonprofit recognized as federally tax-exempt.


title: Certificate authority

text: According to Netcraft in May 2015, the industry standard for monitoring active TLS certificates, "Although the global [TLS] ecosystem is competitive, it is dominated by a handful of major CAs — three certificate authorities (Symantec, Comodo, GoDaddy) account for three-quarters of all issued [TLS] certificates on public-facing web servers. The top spot has been held by Symantec (or VeriSign before it was purchased by Symantec) ever since [our] survey began, with it currently accounting for just under a third of all certificates. To illustrate the effect of differing methodologies, amongst the million busiest sites Symantec issued 44% of the valid, trusted certificates in use — significantly more than its overall market share."


title: Certificate authority

text: In 2020, according to independent survey company Netcraft, "DigiCert is the world's largest high-assurance certificate authority, commanding 60% of the Extended Validation Certificate market, and 96% of organization-validated certificates globally.


title: Certificate authority

text: The commercial CAs that issue the bulk of certificates for HTTPS servers typically use a technique called "domain validation" to authenticate the recipient of the certificate. The techniques used for domain validation vary between CAs, but in general domain validation techniques are meant to prove that the certificate applicant controls a given domain name, not any information about the applicant's identity.


title: Certificate authority

text: Many Certificate Authorities also offer Extended Validation (EV) certificates as a more rigorous alternative to domain validated certificates. Extended validation is intended to verify not only control of a domain name, but additional identity information to be included in the certificate. Some browsers display this additional identity information in a green box in the URL bar. One limitation of EV as a solution to the weaknesses of domain validation is that attackers could still obtain a domain validated certificate for the victim domain, and deploy it during an attack; if that occurred, the difference observable to the victim user would be the absence of a green bar with the company name. There is some question as to whether users would be likely to recognise this absence as indicative of an attack being in progress: a test using Internet Explorer 7 in 2009 showed that the absence of IE7's EV warnings were not noticed by users, however Microsoft's current browser, Edge, shows a significantly greater difference between EV and domain validated certificates, with domain validated certificates having a hollow, grey lock.


title: Certificate authority

text: Domain validation suffers from certain structural security limitations. In particular, it is always vulnerable to attacks that allow an adversary to observe the domain validation probes that CAs send. These can include attacks against the DNS, TCP, or BGP protocols (which lack the cryptographic protections of TLS/SSL), or the compromise of routers. Such attacks are possible either on the network near a CA, or near the victim domain itself.


title: Certificate authority

text: One of the most common domain validation techniques involves sending an email containing an authentication token or link to an email address that is likely to be administratively responsible for the domain. This could be the technical contact email address listed in the domain's WHOIS entry, or an administrative email like , , , or the domain. Some Certificate Authorities may accept confirmation using , , or in the domain. The theory behind domain validation is that only the legitimate owner of a domain would be able to read emails sent to these administrative addresses.


title: Certificate authority

text: Domain validation implementations have sometimes been a source of security vulnerabilities. In one instance, security researchers showed that attackers could obtain certificates for webmail sites because a CA was willing to use an email address like for domain.com, but not all webmail systems had reserved the "ssladmin" username to prevent attackers from registering it.


title: Certificate authority

text: Prior to 2011, there was no standard list of email addresses that could be used for domain validation, so it was not clear to email administrators which addresses needed to be reserved. The first version of the CA/Browser Forum Baseline Requirements, adopted November 2011, specified a list of such addresses. This allowed mail hosts to reserve those addresses for administrative use, though such precautions are still not universal. In January 2015, a Finnish man registered the username "hostmaster" at the Finnish version of Microsoft Live and was able to obtain a domain-validated certificate for live.fi, despite not being the owner of the domain name.


title: Certificate authority

text: A CA issues digital certificates that contain a public key and the identity of the owner. The matching private key is not made available publicly, but kept secret by the end user who generated the key pair. The certificate is also a confirmation or validation by the CA that the public key contained in the certificate belongs to the person, organization, server or other entity noted in the certificate. A CA's obligation in such schemes is to verify an applicant's credentials, so that users and relying parties can trust the information in the issued certificate. CAs use a variety of standards and tests to do so. In essence, the certificate authority is responsible for saying "yes, this person is who they say they are, and we, the CA, certify that".


title: Certificate authority

text: If the user trusts the CA and can verify the CA's signature, then they can also assume that a certain public key does indeed belong to whoever is identified in the certificate.


title: Certificate authority

text: Public-key cryptography can be used to encrypt data communicated between two parties. This can typically happen when a user logs on to any site that implements the HTTP Secure protocol. In this example let us suppose that the user logs on to their bank's homepage www.bank.example to do online banking. When the user opens www.bank.example homepage, they receive a public key along with all the data that their web-browser displays. The public key could be used to encrypt data from the client to the server but the safe procedure is to use it in a protocol that determines a temporary shared symmetric encryption key; messages in such a key exchange protocol can be enciphered with the bank's public key in such a way that only the bank server has the private key to read them.


title: Certificate authority

text: The rest of the communication then proceeds using the new (disposable) symmetric key, so when the user enters some information to the bank's page and submits the page (sends the information back to the bank) then the data the user has entered to the page will be encrypted by their web browser. Therefore, even if someone can access the (encrypted) data that was communicated from the user to www.bank.example, such eavesdropper cannot read or decipher it.


title: Certificate authority

text: This mechanism is only safe if the user can be sure that it is the bank that they see in their web browser. If the user types in www.bank.example, but their communication is hijacked and a fake website (that pretends to be the bank website) sends the page information back to the user's browser, the fake web-page can send a fake public key to the user (for which the fake site owns a matching private key). The user will fill the form with their personal data and will submit the page. The fake web-page will then get access to the user's data.


title: Certificate authority

text: This is what the certificate authority mechanism is intended to prevent. A certificate authority (CA) is an organization that stores public keys and their owners, and every party in a communication trusts this organization (and knows its public key). When the user's web browser receives the public key from www.bank.example it also receives a digital signature of the key (with some more information, in a so-called X.509 certificate). The browser already possesses the public key of the CA and consequently can verify the signature, trust the certificate and the public key in it: since www.bank.example uses a public key that the certification authority certifies, a fake www.bank.example can only use the same public key. Since the fake www.bank.example does not know the corresponding private key, it cannot create the signature needed to verify its authenticity.


title: Certificate authority

text: It is difficult to assure correctness of match between data and entity when the data are presented to the CA (perhaps over an electronic network), and when the credentials of the person/company/program asking for a certificate are likewise presented. This is why commercial CAs often use a combination of authentication techniques including leveraging government bureaus, the payment infrastructure, third parties' databases and services, and custom heuristics. In some enterprise systems, local forms of authentication such as Kerberos can be used to obtain a certificate which can in turn be used by external relying parties. Notaries are required in some cases to personally know the party whose signature is being notarized; this is a higher standard than is reached by many CAs. According to the American Bar Association outline on Online Transaction Management the primary points of US Federal and State statutes enacted regarding digital signatures has been to "prevent conflicting and overly burdensome local regulation and to establish that electronic writings satisfy the traditional requirements associated with paper documents." Further the US E-Sign statute and the suggested UETA code help ensure that:


title: Certificate authority

text: Despite the security measures undertaken to correctly verify the identities of people and companies, there is a risk of a single CA issuing a bogus certificate to an imposter. It is also possible to register individuals and companies with the same or very similar names, which may lead to confusion. To minimize this hazard, the "certificate transparency" initiative proposes auditing all certificates in a public unforgeable log, which could help in the prevention of phishing.


title: Certificate authority

text: In large-scale deployments, Alice may not be familiar with Bob's certificate authority (perhaps they each have a different CA server), so Bob's certificate may also include his CA's public key signed by a different CA, which is presumably recognizable by Alice. This process typically leads to a hierarchy or mesh of CAs and CA certificates.


title: Certificate authority

text: Authorities in the WebPKI provide revocation services to allow invalidation of previously issued certificates. According to the Baseline Requirements by the CA/Browser forum, the CAs must maintain revocation status until certificate expiration. The status must be delivered using Online Certificate Status Protocol. Most revocation statuses on the Internet disappear soon after the expiration of the certificates.


title: Certificate authority

text: An "authority revocation list" (ARL) is a form of certificate revocation list (CRL) containing certificates issued to certificate authorities, contrary to CRLs which contain revoked end-entity certificates.


title: Certificate authority

text: The CA/Browser Forum publishes the Baseline Requirements, a list of policies and technical requirements for CAs to follow. These are a requirement for inclusion in the certificate stores of Firefox and Safari.


title: Certificate authority

text: If the CA can be subverted, then the security of the entire system is lost, potentially subverting all the entities that trust the compromised CA.


title: Certificate authority

text: For example, suppose an attacker, Eve, manages to get a CA to issue to her a certificate that claims to represent Alice. That is, the certificate would publicly state that it represents Alice, and might include other information about Alice. Some of the information about Alice, such as her employer name, might be true, increasing the certificate's credibility. Eve, however, would have the all-important private key associated with the certificate. Eve could then use the certificate to send digitally signed email to Bob, tricking Bob into believing that the email was from Alice. Bob might even respond with encrypted email, believing that it could only be read by Alice, when Eve is actually able to decrypt it using the private key.


title: Certificate authority

text: A notable case of CA subversion like this occurred in 2001, when the certificate authority VeriSign issued two certificates to a person claiming to represent Microsoft. The certificates have the name "Microsoft Corporation", so they could be used to spoof someone into believing that updates to Microsoft software came from Microsoft when they actually did not. The fraud was detected in early 2001. Microsoft and VeriSign took steps to limit the impact of the problem.


title: Certificate authority

text: In 2008, Comodo reseller Certstar sold a certificate for mozilla.com to Eddy Nigg, who had no authority to represent Mozilla.


title: Certificate authority

text: In 2011 fraudulent certificates were obtained from Comodo and DigiNotar, allegedly by Iranian hackers. There is evidence that the fraudulent DigiNotar certificates were used in a man-in-the-middle attack in Iran.


title: Certificate authority

text: In 2012, it became known that Trustwave issued a subordinate root certificate that was used for transparent traffic management (man-in-the-middle) which effectively permitted an enterprise to sniff SSL internal network traffic using the subordinate certificate.


title: Certificate authority

text: An attacker who steals a certificate authority's private keys is able to forge certificates as if they were CA, without needed ongoing access to the CA's systems. Key theft is therefore one of the main risks certificate authorities defend against. Publicly trusted CAs almost always store their keys on a hardware security module (HSM), which allows them to sign certificates with a key, but generally prevent extraction of that key with both physical and software controls. CAs typically take the further precaution of keeping the key for their long-term root certificates in an HSM that is kept offline, except when it is needed to sign shorter-lived intermediate certificates. The intermediate certificates, stored in an online HSM, can do the day-to-day work of signing end-entity certificates and keeping revocation information up to date.


title: Certificate authority

text: CAs sometimes use a key ceremony when generating signing keys, in order to ensure that the keys are not tampered with or copied.


title: Certificate authority

text: The critical weakness in the way that the current X.509 scheme is implemented is that any CA trusted by a particular party can then issue certificates for any domain they choose. Such certificates will be accepted as valid by the trusting party whether they are legitimate and authorized or not. This is a serious shortcoming given that the most commonly encountered technology employing X.509 and trusted third parties is the HTTPS protocol. As all major web browsers are distributed to their end-users pre-configured with a list of trusted CAs that numbers in the dozens this means that any one of these pre-approved trusted CAs can issue a valid certificate for any domain whatsoever. The industry response to this has been muted. Given that the contents of a browser's pre-configured trusted CA list is determined independently by the party that is distributing or causing to be installed the browser application there is really nothing that the CAs themselves can do.


title: Certificate authority

text: This issue is the driving impetus behind the development of the DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) protocol. If adopted in conjunction with Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) DANE will greatly reduce if not eliminate the role of trusted third parties in a domain's PKI.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Eugene Harold Krabs, better known as simply Mr. Krabs, is a fictional character in the American animated television series "SpongeBob SquarePants". He is voiced by actor Clancy Brown and first appeared in the series' pilot episode "Help Wanted" on May 1, 1999. The character was created and designed by marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Krabs owns and operates the Krusty Krab, a prominent fast food restaurant located in the underwater city of Bikini Bottom. He resides in a hollow anchor with his daughter Pearl, who is a teenage sperm whale. Krabs is obsessed with money and dislikes spending it, but will go to great lengths to make Pearl happy. He tends to worry about his riches and neglect the needs of his employees, SpongeBob and Squidward. He is in a romantic relationship with Mrs. Puff and shares a rivalry with his former best friend Plankton, who owns a struggling restaurant called the Chum Bucket located across the street from the Krusty Krab.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Critical reception for Mr. Krabs was positive upon the series' debut but has been mixed as the show progressed. Critics have offered praise toward his portrayal as a single father to Pearl but criticized a perceived exaggeration of his greed throughout the series' run. The character has been featured in a variety of merchandise, including plush toys, collectible figures, and video games. He also appears in the 2004 feature film "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" and the 2015 film "".


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Mr. Krabs is commonly known as the greedy founder and owner of the Krusty Krab restaurant, where SpongeBob works as a fry cook and Squidward works as a cashier. The restaurant's success is built on little competition and the popularity of the Krusty Krab's signature sandwich, the Krabby Patty, the formula to which is a closely guarded trade secret. Mr. Krabs frequently exploits his restaurant's popularity, engaging in price gouging and charging his own employees for use of the building's services.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Krabs' rival and former best friend Plankton operates the Chum Bucket, an unsuccessful restaurant across the street from the Krusty Krab. A major plot point throughout the series is Plankton failing to steal the Krabby Patty formula with the help of his computer wife, Karen, under the assumption that they would be able to replicate the burgers and put the Krusty Krab out of business. To avoid this, Krabs goes to extreme lengths to prevent Plankton from obtaining the recipe; he even refuses to allow him to buy a Krabby Patty legitimately out of fear that Plankton might use Karen to reverse-engineer the formula. Krabs also makes it his duty to ensure that the Chum Bucket never has any business whatsoever.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Krabs values money more than his own well-being and assesses the other characters based on their financial value to him. The only exceptions are Pearl and his girlfriend Mrs. Puff. His love for Mrs. Puff is so strong that it temporarily transcends his greed and drives him to buy her expensive gifts. Krabs tolerates his two employees because they work for little pay and because of their positive impact on his finances, but he is quick to rebuke them if they engage in behavior that drives away customers. Krabs has a tentative father-son relationship with SpongeBob; Krabs often scolds him if he gets in trouble, but at times gives him fatherlike advice. Former showrunner Paul Tibbitt has stated that this Krabs-SpongeBob dynamic is his favorite part of the show, telling "Digital Spy" in 2011 that "the aspect of SpongeBob I love the most is his undying loyalty to Mr. Krabs. No matter how Mr. Krabs treats him. I try to replicate that in my own life in every way."


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Mr. Krabs is the only character in "SpongeBob" initially based on a specific person from Stephen Hillenburg's life. When designing Mr. Krabs, Hillenburg drew inspiration from his former manager at a seafood restaurant. According to Hillenburg, his manager was redheaded, muscular, and a former army cook; these three traits were adapted into Krabs' character, with Krabs' red color standing in for hair. Krabs' speaking manner was also inspired by the restaurant owner, who reminded Hillenburg of a pirate with his strong Maine accent. However, the owner was not greedy, with this detail added by Hillenburg to "give him more personality."


title: Mr. Krabs

text: When Hillenburg first created Mr. Krabs, his and Pearl's surname was spelled with a C rather than a K. Thus, the name of Krabs' restaurant was the "Crusty Crab." Hillenburg changed the name shortly before production began on the show's pilot episode, deciding that K's were funnier and more memorable. The decision to have Mr. Krabs and Pearl live in an anchor was made after production on the first season had started. The original map of the show's setting, which Hillenburg showed Nickelodeon executives as part of his pitch to the network in 1997, did not include an anchor house and instead labeled the Krusty Krab as both of the characters' residence.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Mr. Krabs has a distinct manner of walking; when he moves, he moves his feet very quickly and he is drawn as if he has more than two legs. When directing animation for early episodes, one of Hillenburg's goals was for each character to have a separate walk cycle that showed their personalities; storyboard artist Erik Wiese designed Krabs' walk cycle with the intention of making it cartoonish. Wiese recalled in 2012, "I animated Mr. Krabs' little feet on a four-frame multi-blur cycle—I think it was the best solution to making him walk like a crab." Hillenburg approved of the walk after Wiese demonstrated it on a pencil test machine.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Mr. Krabs' voice is provided by American actor Clancy Brown. Brown describes the voice he uses for the character as "piratey," with "a little Scottish brogue." According to Brown, Krabs' voice was improvised during his audition and it was not challenging for him to find the correct voice. Brown is fond of playing the role, having told the "New York Post" in 2015, "I wouldn't mind doing [the voice] until the end of time. There's just no corollary in live-action work—television or films or anything—to playing a miserly crab on the bottom of the ocean."


title: Mr. Krabs

text: In a 2005 interview with the magazine "Starlog", Brown described his work on "SpongeBob" as a "whole other career" compared to his live action roles. Brown's other acting projects have brought some guest actors onto "SpongeBob SquarePants", including Dennis Quaid, whose work with Brown on "" led to his selection as a guest star for the episode "Grandpappy the Pirate."


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Critical reception for Mr. Krabs has been mixed, with most criticism directed at his parsimony and the lack of realistic consequences he faces for it. In 2014, Spanish professor Pancracio Celdrán criticized the positive portrayal of Mr. Krabs' stinginess in front of young audiences. Economist Sarah Newcomb described Mr. Krabs as a negative stereotype, writing in the Wiley book "Loaded" that "King Midas, Ebenezer Scrooge, Mr. Burns, and Mr. Krabs are the same recycled character, representing the person who cares for money above all."


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Polish scholar Barbara Czarniawska disliked the heroic portrayal of Mr. Krabs in the second "SpongeBob" film, despite being "a ruthless capitalist who exploits his customers and his workers alike." She later criticized how the show seemingly normalized the character's use of "legal forms of manipulation and exploitative power relations in business." Conversely, political activist Howie Klein of "The Huffington Post" offered a more positive interpretation of the character, saying in 2006 that Mr. Krabs is not "exactly an evil villain; he's just a greed-obsessed Republican type." Klein interviewed SpongeBob's voice actor Tom Kenny on the topic; Kenny compared Krabs to oil businessman Erle P. Halliburton, then called the character a comedic representation of "unchecked, unthinking, unregulated capitalism. Everything [to Krabs] is about the bottom line, not about what's socially responsible."


title: Mr. Krabs

text: In his 2011 book "SpongeBob SquarePants and Philosophy", political scientist Joseph J. Foy discusses Krabs' antagonistic side over several chapters. Foy argues that Krabs, not Plankton and Karen, is the true evil character in the series. He also notes his problem with Mr. Krabs' character that "Krabs never seems to learn from the suffering he undergoes, or from witnessing the pain and struggles he inflicts on others."


title: Mr. Krabs

text: In an article for "Complex", Debbie Encalada praised the "SpongeBob" series as a whole for challenging social norms; Mr. Krabs' portrayal as a single father to Pearl was specifically highlighted as an example of the show's "subversiveness by subtly challenging the idea of the nuclear family." "Newsday"s Meghan Giannotta wrote positively of the character in a 2016 article: "Mr. Krabs ... may be known for being cheap, but he's also determined and a good friend and father. He'll do whatever it takes to make his daughter Pearl happy and he goes to extreme measures to help protect his fast-food business." In a review of the season four episode "Have You Seen This Snail?," television critic Tom Shales described Krabs as "good-natured" and as one of "the things people love about "SpongeBob."" Paul Mavis of "DVD Talk" named the Krabs-centric episode "Krusty Krab Training Video" one of the series' best, calling its humorous portrayal of Mr. Krabs' backstory the highlight.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Basketball player LeBron James has stated that if he "could be any character on the show, [he] would be Mr. Krabs." Cartoonist Michael Cavna commented on James' high opinion of Krabs, writing in "The Washington Post" that he found it intriguing how "the gazillionaire NBA hoopster cites his respect for ... the show's resident tightwad." Mr. Krabs is also the favorite "SpongeBob" character of football running back Cedric Benson.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: Mr. Krabs has been featured in various merchandise such as plush toys, video games, comics, and trading cards. The Krabs family restaurant, the Krusty Krab, has been the basis for a Lego playset and many replicas at attractions. A float modeled after the Krusty Krab, featuring a costumed mascot of Pearl that greeted guests and an animatronic Mr. Krabs, regularly appeared at Sea World's weekly "SpongeBob ParadePants" parade. A full-size replica of the building was built in Ramallah, Palestine in 2014. In January 2016, Nickelodeon's parent company Viacom filed a lawsuit against the operators of a similar for-profit "Krusty Krab" restaurant set to open in Texas. A Texas federal judge ruled in January 2017 that the planned restaurant violated Viacom's rights to the "SpongeBob" property, thus halting its construction.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: In 2011, the indie rock group Yo La Tengo performed a live version of the Krusty Krab commercial from the episode "As Seen on TV" at El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Included as part of Yo La Tengo's first tour, it starred Ira Kaplan as Mr. Krabs. Billy Gil of "L.A. Record" praised the performance as a whole and called Kaplan's impression "dead-on." An episode of the sketch comedy series "Robot Chicken" titled "Major League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" includes a skit that stars Mr. Krabs and Pearl. The segment, animated in stop motion like most other sketches on the program, features Mr. Krabs using crab legs as the secret ingredient for Krabby Patties.


title: Mr. Krabs

text: A track on "The Best Day Ever", a 2006 soundtrack album, titled "Fishin' for Money" features the vocal performance of Clancy Brown as Mr. Krabs. In the 2017 Broadway musical based on "SpongeBob", Krabs, played by Brian Ray Norris, sings a duet with Pearl titled "Daddy Knows Best," an original composition written by Alex Ebert that highlights the characters' differences. In his pre-Broadway review of the musical, "Variety"s Steven Oxman asserted that the musical's version of Mr. Krabs "fall[s] flat" compared to his animated counterpart, and that the theatrical adaptation "finds no humor or wit or even edge in Mr. Krabs' obsession with money, nor in the nonsensical element that his daughter is a whale."


title: Mr. Krabs

text: In 2020, a parody fangame entitled "Mr. Krabs Overdoses on Ketamine" was created by animator ThrillDaWill. It involves a "hard on his luck" Mr. Krabs deciding to "fight tooth and nail in order to make ends meet for (his) crippling ketamine addiction." The game would achieve enormous popularity on Twitch with the speedrunning community, with the goal of seeing who would be the fastest to complete the game.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud (; born 7 March 1955) is a Saudi Arabian billionaire businessman, investor, philanthropist and royal. He was listed on "Time" magazine's Time 100, an annual list of the hundred most influential people in the world, in 2008. Al Waleed is a grandson of Abdulaziz, the first king of Saudi Arabia, and of Riad Al Solh, Lebanon's first prime minister.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: Al Waleed is the founder, chief executive officer and 95 percent owner of the Kingdom Holding Company, a company with investments in companies in the financial services, tourism and hospitality, mass media, entertainment, retail, agriculture, petrochemicals, aviation, technology, and real-estate sectors. In 2013, the company had a market capitalization of over $18 billion. He is a minor shareholder in Zaveriwala Holdings LLC, and owns Paris' Four Seasons Hotel George V and part of New York's Plaza Hotel. "Time" has called him the "Arabian Warren Buffett". In November 2017 "Forbes" listed Al Waleed as the 7th-richest man in the world with a net worth of $39.8 billion.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: On 4 November 2017, Al Waleed and other prominent Saudis (including fellow billionaires Waleed bin Ibrahim Al Ibrahim and Saleh Abdullah Kamel) were arrested in Saudi Arabia, in a purge that the Saudi government characterized as an anti-corruption drive. The allegations against Al Waleed include money laundering, bribery, and extorting officials.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: Some of the detainees have been in the Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh, since then. Al Waleed was released from detention on 27 January 2018, following a financial settlement of some kind, after nearly three months in detention. In March 2018 he was dropped from the World's Billionaires list due to lack of current information. He was listed in the 'Top 100 most powerful Arabs' from 2013 to 2021 by "Gulf Business".


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: Al Waleed bin Talal was born in Jeddah on 7 March 1955 to Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz and Mona El Solh. His father was Saudi Arabia's finance minister during the early 1960s, before he went into exile due to his advocacy for political reform. Al Waleed's paternal grandparents were King Abdulaziz and Munaiyir. His grandmother, an Armenian, was presented by the emir of Unayzah to King Abdulaziz in 1921, when she was 12 years old and Abdulaziz was 45. His maternal grandparents were Riad Al Solh, the first prime minister of Lebanon, and Fayza Al Jabiri, the sister of Syrian Prime Minister Saadallah al-Jabiri.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: Al Waleed's parents separated when he was seven, and he lived with his mother in Lebanon. He first attended Pinewood College in Beirut. As a boy, he ran away from home for a day or two at a time, sleeping in unlocked cars, before attending the King Abdulaziz Military Academy in Riyadh. In 1974, he returned to Lebanon, attending the Choueifat School and then Manor School. Al Waleed received a bachelor's degree in business administration from Menlo College in California in 1979, finishing in two-and-a-half years, and a master's degree with honors in social science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in 1985, finishing in eleven months.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: Al Waleed began his business career in 1979 after graduating from Menlo College. He returned to Saudi Arabia, which was in the midst of the 1974–85 oil boom. Operating from a small, four-room cabin in Riyadh and $30,000 start-up money provided by his father, Al Waleed formed Kingdom Establishment in 1980. When that money ran out in a few months, he secured a $300,000 loan from the Saudi American Bank, partly owned by Citibank. Rather than taking a commission for facilitating contracts as the legally required middleman, Al Waleed insisted on a stake in the project. His first success was in 1982, partnering with a South Korean construction company, and from then on, his commissions were used to fund his real estate deals. In his own words, "All the money I used to get from this construction I would plough back into real estate, and in the stock market, both."


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: After the end of the Saudi oil boom, Al Waleed acquired the underperforming United Saudi Commercial Bank (USCB). Through mergers with Saudi Cairo Bank (SCB), forming United Saudi Bank (USB), and the Saudi American Bank (SAMBA), it became a leading Middle Eastern bank. The hostile takeover of USCB in 1986, the merger with SCB in 1997, and the merger of USB with SAMBA in 1999, were the first of their kind in the Kingdom. He then secured a majority in Al-Azizia Panda, merging it with the Savola Group, and took over National Industrialization Company.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: By 1989, his net worth was $1.4 billion, and included stakes in Canary Wharf, Four Seasons Hotel Group, and News Corporation. When Al Waleed turned to the international market, he focused on "established brands going through hard times," as Riz Khan puts it. Al Waleed would do his homework, and then wait for the proper purchase entry point. He invested about $250 million in Chase Manhattan, Citigroup, Manufacturers Hanover, and Chemical Bank. After seven months, he sold his stakes in the other banks and concentrated on investing in Citicorp, acquiring 4.9 percent of the bank. Though the worst performing bank of the four, Al Waleed considered Citicorp had the best potential.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In Sept. 1990, Citibank was undercapitalized due to real estate credit losses and exposure to Latin America debt, prompting a need for a capital reserve. By Nov. they were actively seeking investors. Based on his banking experience in the Kingdom, Al Waleed agreed in Jan. 1991 to invest $590 million, about half his accumulated wealth, in a five-year convertible security paying 11 percent interest. By Feb., that took his total investment in Citicorp to $797 million, or about 15 percent of the company. Though he had received a Federal Reserve temporary waiver to own such a large portion of the company, Al Waleed sold enough shares in 1993 to get below the 10 percent threshold. Still, he was the largest shareholder in the largest US financial institution at the time. Yet, in Alwaleed's words, "It is not a relationship, it's an alliance. We are there forever with them." Sandy Weill says of Al Waleed, "I think what he did really saved the bank."


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In 1993, Al Waleed purchased a 10 percent stake in Saks Fifth Avenue for $100 million. A flagship store was then opened in Riyadh.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In 1994, Al Waleed secured a 50 percent controlling interest in Fairmont, and a 22 percent stake in the Four Seasons. In 1995, he bought a 42 percent stake in the Plaza Hotel. Then, in 1996, he bought the George V for $185 million, and spent $120 million renovating it for a reopening in Dec 1999. Regarding Al Waleed's investment in the George V, Issy Sharp states, "...he created value where no one else could..."


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In 1995, Kingdom Establishment for Trading and Contracting was reorganized as the Kingdom Holding Company, and Al Waleed announced construction of the Kingdom Centre, Kingdom Hospital, Kingdom School and Kingdom City. Also in 1995, he bought a 2.3 percent share of Mediaset after having invested earlier in the Arab Radio and Television Network, acquiring 30 percent. In Oct. 1995, Al Waleed joined a consortium which paid $1.2 billion for control of Canary Wharf, with his share of the company amounting to 6 percent, costing him $66 million.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In March 1997, Al Waleed purchased a 5 percent stake in Apple Inc., making him the largest shareholder. In Nov. 1997, he purchased 1 percent share of Motorola for $287 million and a five percent share of Netscape for $146 million, before its purchase by AOL and merger with Time Warner. In 2001 and 2002, Al Waleed increased his stake in AOL Time Warner by another $540 million. He also invested in MCI, Fox Broadcasting and other technology and media companies.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: "Time" reported in 1997 that Al Waleed owned about five percent of News Corporation, which he purchased for $400 million, making him the third largest shareholder. In April 1999, Al Waleed purchased an additional $200 million of preferred shares. In 2010 his News Corporation stake was about seven percent ($3 billion). Three years later News Corporation had a $175 million (19-percent) investment in Al Waleed's Rotana Group, the Arab world's largest entertainment company. A review of his holdings implied that Al Waleed had sold his investment in AOL.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In April 1997, Al Waleed purchased a 4 percent stake in Planet Hollywood for $57 million, and another 16 percent in Nov 1998 for $45 million.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In Oct. 1997, Al Waleed bought 27 percent of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, which he increased to 33 percent in 2003.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In 1999, "The Economist" expressed doubts about the source of his income, wondering if he was a front man for other Saudi investors:


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: He has not earned enough income from his investments to pay for all that he has spent in the 1990s. The mystery goes back to that first stake in Citicorp. The prince has declared that this money came entirely from his personal funds. He says he started out in 1979 with a loan of just $30,000 from his father. He also mortgaged a house that his father had given him, raising something like $400,000. And each month, as a grandson of Ibn Saud, he receives $15,000. You could barely clothe a Saudi prince for such sums, let alone furnish him with a multi-billion-dollar empire. Nevertheless, by 1991 Prince Alwaleed had felt able to risk an investment of $797m in Citicorp.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: Al Waleed invested in WorldCom, Priceline.com, Coca-Cola, and Ford Motor Company, totaling almost $2 billion. In Asia, he bought 5.9 percent of Daewoo for $50 million, which he increased to 18 percent with an additional $100 million investment, 3 percent of PROTON Holdings for $46 million, 3 percent of Ong Beng Seng's Hotel Properties Ltd., and $50 million worth of Hyundai Motor Company bonds. In Africa, he invested $50 million, acquiring 10 percent of Sonatel, 10 percent of Ecobank, 13.7 percent of United Bank for Africa, and 14 percent of CAL Bank. Investments which turned out poorly included WorldCom, Priceline, Teledesic, and KirchMedia, besides Planet Hollywood and Euro Disney.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: His stake in Apple was sold in 2005. Al Waleed also invested in Eastman Kodak and TWA, both of which performed moderately well.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: His real-estate holdings included large stakes in the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and New York's Plaza Hotel; Al Waleed sold half his shares in the Plaza in August 2004. He has invested in London's Savoy Hotel and Monaco's Monte Carlo Grand Hotel. Al Waleed holds a ten-percent stake in Euro Disney S.C.A., the company which owns, manages and maintains Disneyland Paris in Marne-la-Vallée.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: The 2004 "Forbes" list of wealthiest people had Al Waleed fourth, with a net worth of $21.5 billion. More than $1.3 billion was in hotel holdings.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In January 2005, Al Waleed purchased the Savoy Hotel in London for an estimated £250 million, to be managed by Fairmont Hotels and Resorts; his sister, Sultana Nurul, owns an estimated 16 percent stake. In January 2006, in partnership with the U.S. real-estate firm Colony NorthStar, Kingdom Holding acquired Toronto-based Fairmont Hotels and Resorts for an estimated $3.9 billion. It was reported in 2009 that Al Waleed owned 35 percent of Research and Marketing Group (SRMG), a large mid-east media company.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In August 2011, Al Waleed announced that his company had contracted with the Saudi Binladin Group to build the world's tallest building, the Kingdom Tower (at a height of at least ) for SR 4.6 billion. The original plan—announced in 2008—called it برج الميل (Arabic for "One-Mile Tower"), at a height of and an estimated cost of $20 billion.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In December 2011, Al Waleed invested $300 million in Twitter, purchasing secondary shares from insiders. The purchase gave Kingdom Holding a "more than 3% share" in the company, which was valued at $8 billion in late summer 2011.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In 2015, he announced that he would donate his fortune to charity at an unspecified date. He had previously donated $3.5 billion over the course of 35 years through his charitable organization Alwaleed Philanthropies.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: From 2015 to 2021, he lost several lawsuits against Pierre El Daher, CEO of LBCI, and would be required to pay $22m, due to breaches in contract conditions with the Lebanese broadcaster.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In May 2022, he was listed as committing to purchase approximately 35 million shares of Twitter Inc. at or immediately prior to the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk and other private-equity investors behind Musk's bid.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: On 4 November 2017, Al Waleed was arrested in Saudi Arabia in a "corruption crackdown" conducted by a new royal anti-corruption committee. This was done on authority of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, his cousin (both are grandsons of Ibn Saud, first monarch and founder of Saudi Arabia), with the aim of consolidating his position.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: Just days before his arrest, Al Waleed reportedly contacted US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (who had publicly criticized the Saudi government in the past) and invited him to return to the Kingdom to contribute to Mohammad bin Salman's vision.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: The authorities in Saudi Arabia were demanding at least $6 billion from Prince Al Waleed bin Talal in exchange of his release.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In total, 320 princes, ministers and businessmen were detained at the five-star Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh. Al Waleed was released from detention in late January 2018, nearly three months after his arrest, after he and most of the other Saudi notables arrested the previous year had made a financial settlement of some kind with the Saudi government. Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, the son of the late King Abdullah (1924–2015), was released after paying a reported $1 billion. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the price for his release was $6 billion.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: The Saudi Arabia government did not disclose charges or produce evidence and the negotiations were held in secret.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: In 2013, Kerry Dolan, editor of "Forbes" annual billionaires' list, wrote an article accompanying the list entitled "Prince Alwaleed and the Curious Case of Kingdom Holding Stock". According to Dolan, Al Waleed attached great importance to the "Forbes" list and she alleged a correlation between changes in the share price of Kingdom Holdings and the annual run-up to the list's publication. In the "Forbes" article, Dolan wrote that Al Waleed would blind copy Dolan on text messages he sent to prominent people in an attempt to impress her. She spent a week with him in Riyadh in 2008, at his behest, touring his palaces. In 2006 "Forbes" estimated Al Waleed's net worth at $7 billion less than he claimed. He telephoned Dolan at home, according to the editor, "nearly in tears". Al Waleed had Kingdom Holding's chief financial officer fly to New York before a previous list was published to ensure that "Forbes" used his stated numbers.


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: The article explains the methodology behind "Forbes" 2013 estimate of his wealth at $20 billion, examines Kingdom Holdings' share performance and contains Dolan's communications with Kingdom Holdings CFO Shadi Sanbar. Sanbar demanded that Al Waleed's name be removed from the billionaires' list if "Forbes" did not increase its valuation of his wealth. Dolan wrote, "As "Forbes" asked increasingly specific questions in the process of fact-checking this story, the prince acted unilaterally the day before it was published, announcing through his office that he would 'sever ties' with the list." Sanbar said in a press release, "Prince Alwaleed has taken this step as he felt he could no longer participate in a process which resulted in the use of incorrect data and seemed designed to disadvantage Middle Eastern investors and institutions."


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: Al Waleed said in a March 2013 interview with "The Sunday Telegraph" that he would pursue legal action against "Forbes". "They are accusing me of market manipulation," Al Waleed said. "This is all wrong and a false statement. We will fight it all the way against "Forbes"." He called the "Forbes" list "flawed and inaccurate", saying that it "displays bias against Middle East investors and financial institutions."


title: Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud

text: "The Guardian" reported that on 6 June 2013, Al Waleed had brought a defamation claim in London against the publisher of "Forbes"; its editor, Randall Lane, and two journalists from the magazine. "Forbes" expressed surprise at the libel action and the fact that it was filed in London. According to the magazine, "The Prince's suit would be precisely the kind of libel tourism that the UK's recently passed libel reform law is intended to thwart. We would anticipate that the London high court will agree. "Forbes" stands by its story." As of 20 June, "Forbes" had not been served with papers.