11.03.2017

Tadawul Wants Aramco Listing

11.03.2017

Mine. Mine. It’s all mine.

Well, maybe.

Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul stock exchange wants to be the sole listing venue and handler of the upcoming  Aramco’s, according to Khalid al-Hussan, Chief Executive Officer at the bourse. In a report on Zawya, he added that his exchange has sufficient liquidity to absorb the share sale.

Originally, the Aramco listing was to be conducted in multiple phases – the first on the Tadawul itself and then consequent ones on global exchanges such as in New York, London or in Asia. The multi-jurisdictional listing was planned to bring more ecoic growth to the Kingdom and region, as well as global notoriety.

Tadawul, it was reported, was working hard to convince Aramco of the merits of such a move, but the company had not yet made a decision, al-Hussan said.

“Tadawul is the main exchange in the region and as the most liquid among the largest 25 exchanges in the world and among the 10 largest emerging markets, Tadawul aspires to be the exclusive venue,” he said at an investment conference in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia expects to value the state-owned oil producer at a minimum of $2 trillion, in what could be the world’s biggest initial public offering, the centerpiece of its Vision 2030 plan to diversify the economy away from oil.

But some analysts have expressed concern about the risk of the share sale swamping the local market.

“The exclusive listing of Aramco on the Saudi stock exchange is possible but at a speculated valuation of around $2 trillion it will be too large for Tadawul to solely handle the listing of even a 5 percent stake sale,” said Nitin Garg, senior analyst at SICO Bahrain, was quoted as saying. “The Saudi market does not have sufficient liquidity to absorb such a large initial public offering.”

Aramco’s chief executive confirmed global exchanges have been eyed as distribution points for Aramco.  The company has said it plans to list in 2018.

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