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"I believe late 2020, early 2021," he said, discussing the
timing of the IPO in an interview with Bloomberg at the royal
palace in Riyadh. "The investor will decide the price on the
day. I believe it will be above $2 trillion. Because it will be
huge."
Aramco declined to comment.
For the past two years, Saudi Arabia has prepared to place up to
5 percent of its national oil company on the stock market.
Officials talked up the Saudi Aramco initial public offering
(IPO) with international exchanges, global banks and U.S.
President Donald Trump.
The planned listing of the world's biggest oil producer was to
be the cornerstone of the kingdom's promised economic overhaul
and, at a targeted $100 billion, the biggest IPO ever.
It was the brainchild of 32-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, heir apparent of the world's largest oil exporter.
After months of setbacks, the international and domestic legs of
the IPO were pulled, as the prince's father King Salman stepped
in to shelve it, three sources with ties to government insiders
told Reuters in late August.
Prince Mohammed said in the Bloomberg interview that the Saudi
government will keep the shares of Aramco after the IPO, rather
than transfer them into the sovereign wealth fund as originally
planned.
Instead, the public investment fund (PIF) will receive the $70
billion from the sale of its stake in Sabic, plus the $100
billion that country hopes to raise from the Aramco IPO, the
report said.
Prince Mohammed provided a detailed timetable of his plans for
Aramco, saying that after the deal with local petrochemical
giant Sabic is completed in 2019, the company would need a full
financial year before it can go ahead and sell shares to the
public, the report said.
(Reporting by Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru)
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