Skip the IPO of the century. According to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, there will be no more listing of Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian oil giant, on the Stock Exchange, either now or for the immediate future. What it was supposed to be the largest equity placement not only of the century but of all time, worth around 100 billion dollars, therefore appears to have stalled. "Everyone is practically certain that the IPO will not happen," a senior executive of Aramco itself admitted to the WSJ. The conclusion would have been that a listing on a major stock exchange such as New York, London and even Hong Kong it would in particular involve too many legal risks, exposing Aramco and its top management to potential shareholder appeals.
He also contributed significantly to curbing enthusiasm the rise in oil prices: have doubled to around $80 a barrel since early 2016, reducing the urgency of an IPO to rake in resources to recalibrate Saudi Arabia's future. The IPO stall threatens repercussions that go beyond the markets, where it would have given birth to the largest listed group in history and made the fortune of Wall Street and global investment banks. It was in fact, also and above all, one of the central pillars, if not the pillar par excellence, of the strategies for modernizing the entire economy of the Persian Gulf country, of its rapprochement with Western finance: a further sign of relaxation and friendship with the President Trump (who in his tweets had explicitly invited Aramco to list on Wall Street) and also a plan to make it less dependent on crude oil in the future. He would probably have raised a hundred billion dollars, through the sale of a 5% stake based on a valuation of the entire empire of two trillion. Even an alternative hypothesis, the direct sale of a share to China, seems to have faded.
