Saudi Arabia considers selling more stake in Aramco to boost finances

The plan is to have a multiple number of listings over the years, according to Saudi Aramco chairman

Saudi Aramco board members with Tadawul chairperson Sarah Al-Suhaimi and chief executive Khalid Al Hussan at the bell ringing ceremony marking the launch of the company's shares trading. Photo courtesShow more

Saudi Arabia is planning to sell more stakes in state-owned oil producer Saudi Aramco as it looks to raise money to fuel an economic diversification plan, chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan said.

The kingdom, which raised nearly $30 billion (Dh110bn) last year from Saudi Aramco’s initial public offering in Riyadh, is planning to sell more of its stake in the world’s biggest oil producer, Mr Al-Rumayyan said in an interview with Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein. Potential future share sales could be held outside Saudi Arabia, he said.

“If we have any good stock exchange that we think can bring some valuable investors to us, we will definitely consider it,” said Mr Al-Rumayyan, who is also governor of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

“We only offered 2 per cent of the company, so there’s still 98 per cent of the company owned by the shareholder, which is the government of Saudi Arabia,” Mr Al-Rumayyan said. “Our programme is to have a multiple number of listings over the years.”

He spoke in an interview with Bloomberg's The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations.

Mr Al-Rumayyan is one of the key figures in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plan to shift the Saudi economy away from a reliance on crude sales. Proceeds from Aramco share sales will be transferred to the Public Investment Fund, as the sovereign fund is known, and used for international deals and domestic diversification projects. In addition to his other responsibilities, Mr Al-Rumayyan was appointed chairman of the IPO committee for Saudi Aramco last year to help push the deal forward, followed by becoming Aramco chairman in September.

“Things were not going as I thought it should be going,” he said. “So I had a number of discussions with committee members, and said we have to do it this way, and I had the same discussions with the government and the Crown Prince, and after a while was appointed as chairman of that committee.”

Mr Al-Rumayyan is also looking at other ways to raise money from Aramco.

“We have a lot of assets that could be monetised because they are non-core assets, which can improve the performance of the company,” he said.

Other oil and gas producers in the Middle East are also opening up their operations to outside investors to attract fresh capital and diversify their economies.