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HSBC wins mandate on $100
billion Saudi Aramco IPO: CEO
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 [April 25, 2017]
By Sumeet Chatterjee and Donny Kwok
HONG
KONG (Reuters) - HSBC Holdings Plc has been formally mandated as
an adviser on the initial public offering of Saudi Arabia's national oil
giant Aramco, expected to be the world's largest ever IPO, HSBC's chief
executive said on Monday.
Europe's biggest bank joins peers including JPMorgan Chase & Co and
Morgan Stanley on the deal, which is expected to raise some $100 billion
and is the centrepiece of the Saudi government's ambitious strategy to
diversify away from oil.
HSBC's Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver announced the bank's appointment
on the deal at a shareholders' meeting in Hong Kong, confirming a
Reuters report in February that the bank was close to being mandated on
the hottest investment banking ticket in the world.
Gulliver also said HSBC is confident it can maintain dividend payouts in
the foreseeable future and expects to exceed risk-weighted asset and
cost-saving targets.
Despite earnings pressure, HSBC has retained its dividend payout ratio
at a higher level in the last few years, at a time when some of its
peers, including Standard Chartered <STAN.L>, withheld dividend payments
for 2016.
The bank may have to move "some thousand roles" from Britain to Paris
depending on how the country's Brexit negotiations with the European
Union unfold, chairman Douglas Flint added, reiterating the bank's
previous estimates of staff moves.
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HSBC Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver, attends the annual meeting of
the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, January 18,
2017. REUTERS/Ruben Sprich
HSBC
last month named AIA Group boss Mark Tucker as the new chairman of its board,
replacing veteran Flint, whose departure will end one of the longest-serving
management partnerships at a major global bank. CEO Gulliver is also due to
leave in 2018, and one of the main tasks facing Tucker immediately after taking
over the new role in October will be selecting a new chief executive for
Europe's biggest bank.
(Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Donny Kwok, Additional reporting by Michelle
Price,; Writing by Lawrence White; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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