Saudi Aramco is considering the sale of a stake to a Chinese investor as plans for its highly anticipated international public offering (IPO) are pushed beyond its target of next year, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The IPO is expected to be the world’s largest stock sale and is a key component of the Saudi government’s economic reform program which aims to diversify the desert kingdom away from its reliance on oil exports.
A private placement of shares in the state oil company to a Chinese investor is being evaluated as a precursor to the international IPO, according to two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity as the information was not public.
They declined to name the investor, or how much of Aramco would be sold.
The move would provide Saudi Arabia with cash to help implement the National Transformation Program (NTP), as the reform package is formally known, one of the sources said.
The NTP comprises a number of difficult economic adjustments for Saudi Arabia — including removing some state subsidies and raising taxes — that are aimed at taming huge budget deficits caused by lower oil prices.
Concerns about the impact of the austerity measures on the economy are rising. While data earlier this month showed the deficit was shrinking, the Saudi economy entered recession in the second quarter, consumer prices are falling and unemployment among Saudis is at 12.8 percent.
“A range of options for the public listing of Saudi Aramco continue to be held under active review,” a Saudi Aramco spokesman said.
“No decision has been made and the IPO process remains on track,” the spokesman said.
Aramco’s dual listing on the Saudi stock market, Tadawul, and on an international exchange had been earmarked for next year by the Saudi authorities — with stock markets in New York, London and Asia all vying for the offering.
A decision on which exchange would secure the offering has still not been made, with top members of the Saudi royal family preferring New York and Aramco’s financial and legal advisers advocating London.
Both venues have political issues that have caused the Saudis unease and delayed the location decision, a third source familiar with the matter said.
The third source added that an international IPO beyond next year was still very much an option, while a Tadawul listing was on track for next year, pointing to comments from senior Saudi officials, such as those made in Moscow earlier this month.
The Financial Times reported that Aramco had held talks about a private stake sale to foreign governments — including China — and other investors amid growing concerns about the feasibility of an international listing.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
The US Department of Commerce last week ordered multiple chip equipment companies to halt shipments of certain tools to China’s second-largest chipmaker, Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (華虹半導體), its latest action to slow the country’s development of advanced chips, two people familiar with the matter said. The department sent letters to at least a handful of companies informing them of restrictions on tools and other materials destined for two Hua Hong facilities US officials believe make China’s most sophisticated chips, the people said. Top US chip equipment companies Lam Research Corp, Applied Materials Inc and KLA Corp, each of which has significant
RSS