It’s a pretty bad time to be thinking about going public if you’re an oil company. Oil has lost half its value in a little over two years, and the market for IPOs is in the doldrums.
Saudi Aramco is no ordinary oil company, however. The world’s top producer says it will be ready to launch the biggest IPO ever by 2018.
“We are optimistic,” CEO Amin Nasser told CNNMoney’s John Defterios. “The market has started to recover, we expect it to recover even more in 2017 and I think the time in 2018 will be almost right.”
Saudi Arabia revealed its plan to sell part of the oil behemoth earlier this year. The oil price slump has blown a huge hole in the kingdom’s budget, and even a tiny share of Aramco would be worth tens of billions of dollars.
