Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has made billions of dollars by investing in underperforming, brand name companies, says he’s bullish on two of the biggest: Citigroup and Time Warner.

Prince Alwaleed, 50, Citigroup’s biggest shareholder, said the bank’s shares may rise more than 50% to $70 a share in the next year as the company puts a series of scandals behind it and investors focus on earnings growth. Time Warner shares will advance on the strength of its Internet unit, America Online, he said on Saturday in an interview at the Hotel George V in Paris.

Prince Alwaleed backed Citigroup and Chief Executive Officer Charles Prince even though the prince has forged ties with Deutsche Bank and HSBC Holdings. He met with the chairman of Citigroup, Sandy Weill, and Mike Jensen, his private banker at Citigroup, yesterday at the George V. Citigroup shares have fallen 5.4% this year.

“Chuck Prince is trying to put everything in place, and really the expectation for Citigroup is to go back sky high,” Prince Alwaleed, dressed in a gray turtleneck and gray checked jacket, said in front of an 18th century tapestry at the George V, which he owns. “He’s doing a good job.”

Prince Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah, owns 4.3% of New York-based Citigroup, valued at $9.9 billion. He holds 1% of Time Warner, also based in New York, valued at $821 million.

With shares of Time Warner down 9.5% this year, billionaire Carl Icahn is pressuring the company to buy back shares, name new board members, and sell part of AOL. The stock traded for $17.61 on November 4 in New York. Mr. Icahn and a group of investors owned 2.8% of Time Warner as of last month.

Prince Alwaleed also met with Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons at the George V, which served as General Dwight Eisenhower’s headquarters in Paris during World War II.

“Time Warner now is witnessing a potential revival,” said the prince, who was accompanied by his spokeswoman, travel coordinator, two photographers, and a cameraman. “When I met Mr. Parsons a year ago, I told him AOL was a jewel. It’s a jewel, but not many people are seeing it. AOL should never be sold in totality. This is the locomotive, the engine of Time Warner.”

Prince Alwaleed this year established ventures with Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest lender, to provide banking and brokerage services in Saudi Arabia and with HSBC, Europe’s no. 1 bank by market value, to invest in sub-Saharan Africa. Citigroup sold its 20% stake in Riyadh-based Samba Financial Group, formerly known as Saudi American Bank, to the state-run Public Investment Fund in 2004. Alwaleed owns 5% of Samba.

Any split between Prince Alwaleed and Citigroup would mark a turning point in a 25-year relationship during which the bank and the billionaire have credited each other for their successes.

Prince Alwaleed said he is simply pursuing lucrative investments.

“I go where my interests are,” he said. “There’s no doubt that HSBC helps us a lot in the African continent and Deutsche Bank will help us a lot in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. But this will never ever take away from my international alliance and global link with Citigroup.”

Mr. Prince, the 55-year-old CEO, said Prince Alwaleed remains a supportive shareholder.

“He’s got a lot of investment activities, and it would be very unusual, I think, if those were exclusively with us,” Mr. Prince said in a November 3 interview. “I don’t take anything from the notion that he’s working with other institutions.”

Prince Alwaleed has pursued a strategy of buying battered shares of Western companies with established brand names, which led him to acquire holdings in Apple Computer and Motorola in the 1990s. He has begun to focus on emerging markets and hotels, this year buying a stake in London’s Savoy Hotel and announcing plans to build a Four Seasons resort in Marrakech, Morocco.

The prince made his last big bet on Western companies in 2000 as the Internet bubble began to deflate. That year Prince Alwaleed invested $2 billion in 19 American stocks, including $50 million each in Internet companiesAmazon.com, DoubleClick, and Priceline.com. He also put $200 million into WorldCom, which went bankrupt in 2002.

Prince Alwaleed called the investments his “Millennium Bug” in his authorized biography, “Alwaleed: Businessman, Billionaire, Prince,” written by former Cable News Network host Riz Khan and published last month by William Morrow.

In the interview, Prince Alwaleed said he doesn’t expect shares of Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple to rise much further. The stock gained fivefold to $61.15 over the past two years, after CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPod music player. Prince Alwaleed owns 3% of Apple, a stake valued at $1.5 billion.

“The benefits of the iPod and all the good moves that Steve Jobs has made have already been put in the price,” he said.

Prince Alwaleed also reiterated plans to increase his stake in News Corporation if it’s necessary to prevent John Malone’s Liberty Media from taking control of the New York-based company. The prince owns 5.46% of News Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, 74, and his family. Prince Alwaleed’s stake is valued at almost $2.6 billion.

“We’ll spend whatever is needed to keep this company independent,” he said. “I am not anti-Malone. I am pro-Murdoch and pro-News Corp.”

Prince Alwaleed began investing after graduating from California’s Menlo College in 1979, and a year later he received a $300,000 loan from Saudi American Bank, which was run by Citicorp, according to the biography. By 1989 he was worth $1.4 billion, partly because of commissions earned as a representative of international construction companies in Saudi Arabia.