{"id":12560,"date":"2018-08-24T00:29:37","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T00:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12560"},"modified":"2018-08-24T00:29:37","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T00:29:37","slug":"plans-to-list-aramco-still-a-go-saudi-minister-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=12560","title":{"rendered":"Plans to list Aramco still a go, Saudi minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Denying news reports,\u00a0Saudi Arabia<\/a>\u00a0said on Thursday it “remains committed” to an initial public offering of state-run oil behemoth Saudi Aramco, despite delays and growing speculation it may never be listed.<\/p>\n

A statement by Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih<\/span>\u00a0refuted Wednesday’s reports that the IPO – billed as the biggest such deal in history –\u00a0had been called off.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“Timing will depend on multiple factors, including favourable market conditions and a downstream acquisition, which the company will pursue in the next few months as directed by its board of directors,” he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Falih did not elaborate, but the acquisition in question is likely to be the Saudi Arabian Oil Co’s proposed purchase of a stake in petrochemical company SABIC.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser last month confirmed preliminary talks to acquire a “strategic stake” in SABIC, the world’s fourth-largest petrochemicals company, which is 70 percent owned by the government-run Public Investment Fund (PIF).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Key move<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n

The proposed listing of the national champion was a central part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform drive aimed at restructuring the kingdom’s economy and reducing its dependence on oil revenue.<\/p>\n

Saudi announced the plan to sell about 5 percent of Aramco in 2016 via local and international listing, predicting the sale would value the whole company at $2 trillion or more.<\/p>\n

Several industry experts, however, questioned whether a valuation that high was realistic, which hindered the process of preparing the IPO.<\/p>\n

Stock exchanges in financial centres – including London, New York and Hong Kong – have been vying to host the international tranche of the share sale.<\/p>\n

An army of bankers and lawyers started to fiercely compete to win advisory roles in the IPO, seen as a gateway to a host of other deals they expected to flow from the kingdom’s wide privatisation programme.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Denying news reports,\u00a0Saudi Arabia\u00a0said on Thursday it “remains committed” to an initial public offering of state-run oil behemoth Saudi Aramco, despite delays and growing speculation it may never be listed. A statement by Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih\u00a0refuted Wednesday’s reports that the IPO – billed as the biggest such deal in history –\u00a0had been called…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}