Saudi Arabia has beaten Nigeria on the Initial Public Offering (IPO) on its state owned oil company as it declared plans to sell shares of its entire business in the world’s biggest oil company, Saudi Aramco.
The federal government had been foot-dragging on the issuance of IPO for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) with the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources issuing a new 2018 date for the scheme. Saudi Aramco however, said last weekend that the IPO was not just in its refining or distribution operations but the entire business.
Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Saudi Aramco, will announce “very soon” a list of investment banks and consultants advising it on the initial public offering, CEO Amin Nasser said in Bahrain. It plans to list shares on the Saudi stock market and is also considering foreign bourses in London, Hong Kong and New York, he said. Aramco’s plan to sell a stake of about 5 per cent could value the company in trillions of dollars. “We need to do a lot of internal work to prepare for this listing,” Nasser said.
We achieved a lot of progress so far. People have to appreciate the size of Aramco and its complexity.” The company will review its budget “shortly,” he said. “Our spending program is active and evolving.” Nigeria had earlier unveiled plans to make its first initial public offering of assets owned by NNPC before Kachikwu announced the 2018 date.
“It’s inevitable,” Kachikwu, said in an interview in Abu Dhabi. “Part of the cleaning up process that we’re doing is to prepare for that.” Africa’s top oil producer plans to sell shares in its refining and distribution business and “select” exploration and production assets to the public, he said. NNPC, as the state oil company is known, manages Nigeria’s stakes in joint ventures with international oil companies that pump the country’s crude.
“As it stand now, Saudi has beaten us to it again because it must have addressed all the botttlenecks before going to town with the news of IPO unlike here where we announced a date and later shifted the date based on PIB debacle we need to contend with,” he added.
