bin Laden family

Bin Laden family, بن لادن‎, also spelled Bin Ladin, is a wealthy family intimately connected with the innermost circles of the Saudi royal family. The family was thrown into media spotlight through the activities of one of its members, Osama bin Laden. The financial interests of the bin Laden family are represented by the Saudi Binladin Group, a global oil and equity management conglomerate grossing $5 billion U.S. dollars annually, and one of the largest construction firms in the Islamic world, with offices in London and Geneva. According to an American diplomat, the bin Laden family owns part of Microsoft and Boeing among other companies.

The family traces its origins to a poor, uneducated Hadhrami named Awad bin Laden, a Kendah tribesman from the village of Al Rubat, in the Wadi Doan in the Tarim Valley, Hadramout governorate, Yemen. He died in 1919. His son was Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (died 1967). Mohammed bin Laden was a native of the Shafi`i (Sunni) Hadhramaut coast in southern Yemen and emigrated to Saudi Arabia prior to World War I. He set up a construction company and came to Abdul Aziz ibn Saud's attention through construction projects, later being awarded contracts for major renovations at Mecca, where he made his initial fortune from exclusive rights to all mosque and other religious building construction not only in Saudi Arabia, but as far as Ibn Saud's influence reached. 

Until his death, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden had exclusive control over restorations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Soon the bin Laden corporate network extended far beyond construction sites.

Mohammed's special intimacy with the monarchy was inherited by the younger bin Laden generation. Mohammed's sons attended Victoria College, Alexandria, Egypt. Their schoolmates included King Hussein of Jordan, Zaid Al Rifai, the Kashoggi brothers (whose father was one of the king's physicians), Kamal Adham (who ran the General Intelligence Directorate under King Faisal), present-day contractors Mohammed Al Attas, Fahd Shobokshi and Ghassan Sakr and actor Omar Sharif.
When Mohammed bin Laden died in 1967, his son Salem bin Laden took over the family enterprises, until his own accidental death in 1988. Salem was one of at least 54 children by various wives.