Saudi Aramco will list the first shares of the company on Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange, the Tadawul, and will do so “very soon,” the company’s CEO Amin Nasser said.
The local listing is likely to precede an international one, but the company has not yet selected a location, according to reports.
“The primary listing is to list locally but we are also ready for listing outside in other districts,” Nasser said at the World Energy Congress in Abu Dhabi. “We are ready to list wherever shareholders decide.”
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“We have always said that Aramco is ready whenever the shareholder makes a decision to list … so we are prepared, that’s the bottom line,” Nasser told reporters. “It is going to be the primary listing, to list locally, but we are ready also for listing outside in other jurisdictions,” Reuters reports.
The IPO is planned for 2020-2021, but could happen by the end of this year.
New York, London and Hong Kong have all expressed interest in the IPO, “but Tokyo has also emerged as a strong candidate,” Arab News reports.
Saudi Aramco has picked a slew of banks to work on its planned initial public offering following intense lobbying by some of the world’s top dealmakers, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Aramco selected firms including Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co.and Morgan Stanley for top roles on the deal, Bloomberg reports. The energy company is “choosing as many as nine joint global coordinators including some Middle Eastern banks.”
