Saudi Aramco in talks with PIF for SABIC’s share-purchase agreement: Nasser

Saudi Aramco is currently negotiating with the Public Investment Fund (PIF) on the share-purchase agreement in order to acquire the latter’s stake in Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) before Aramco can go for an IPO, Arab News reported, citing Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser.

“We need to close a share-purchase agreement and we’re in discussions now with PIF about that,” the report quoted Amin Nasser in an interview to the newspaper at last week’s World Economic Forum at Davos.

“When we reach an agreement we have to go and seek regulatory and antitrust approval. That will take almost until the end of the year 2019, or maybe a little bit more; we don’t know because you need approval from a lot of countries where SABIC has major operations. SABIC is not a small company, it’s a huge company, so you need a lot of approvals from lots of countries,” Nasser said.

“After you finish that you need a minimum of one year to reflect the purchase in your balance sheet. It has to be consolidated and show what is the impact on our balance sheet — where is the integration, where is the value, because the investors will want to see … After that you can go to the market,” he told the newspaper.