For the next twelve days, Donald Trump is away from American shores. He’ll be in Asia, and except for the press conferences, people will be on the lookout for his tweets, which, due to the time difference, will come at unexpected times.
Today we got another unexpected tweet, albeit an economic one which can have major consequences.
Knowing full well that the UK’s prime minister Theresa May has been negotiating with the Saudis for some two months now to get the Aramco (Saudi Arabian national oil company) IPO to London next year, Trump sent out his version of pitching for it with the following tweet: "Would very much appreciate Saudi Arabia doing their IPO of Aramco with the New York Stock Exchange. Important to the United States!"
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Would very much appreciate Saudi Arabia doing their IPO of Aramco with the New York Stock Exchange. Important to the United States!</p>— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/926793510723796993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">4 November 2017</a></blockquote>
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An IPO, or Initial Public Offering, is when a company goes public for the first time. Given the, shall we say, rocky road that oil prices have been on in the last few years (down from 100$ to 25$ per barrel, now up again to 60$), Saudi Arabia has realized it needs to start investing in its infrastructure and development for when the oil will eventually run out.
So it has decided to raise capital by selling part of its national treasure, Aramco, the Saudi oil company.
The IPO itself is expected to raise some $100 billion for Saudi Arabia, and whatever stock exchange could catch it outside of Saudi Arabia stands to make a killing.
In total, the company would be listed with an expected worth of $2 trillion, yes that’s a t, trillion dollars, making it the probable largest oil company to go public ever.
You can see why President Trump is eager for the business.
Source:
Dan Pena mentioned on Joe Rohan’s podcast some time ago that in doing this IPO the Saudis have to (for the first time) officially disclose the exact amount of oil reserves in the country, and thst allegedly the quantity should shit all over the peak oil theory and ruin a few trillions in capital going to post oil economic programs and bringing the price of oil down.
If true, it would be a move on there part to prove there gravy train can keep going, not just there way to divest out of it.