Aramco IPO the elephant in the room

摘要

State-owned Saudi Aramco sees itself at the heart of the country’s Vision 2030 plan to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy away from its heavy dependence on oil and to catalyse its industrialisation. But Aramco is publicly ignoring a planned initial public offering (IPO) of up to 5pc of the firm’s value to raise enough cash to facilitate the transformation. Aramco executives attending the World Petroleum Congress in Istanbul, Turkey, on 10-11 July talked about how the firm can help the country achieve its economic goals over the next 13 years. But neither the firm nor any of its executives publicly referred to the IPO planned for late 2018. Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser says it will not release its financial results until after it is listed, despite previously saying that it would release them this year.