#Saudi Wealth Fund Leans Toward Spending Aramco Windfall Locally - Bloomberg

Saudi Wealth Fund Leans Toward Spending Aramco Windfall Locally - Bloomberg:

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund expects to spend “a lot” of the $26 billion proceeds from the sale of shares in Saudi Aramco in the domestic economy as it shifts focus toward high-impact local investments, Finance Minister Mohammed Al Jadaan said.

Asked how the Public Investment Fund would use the windfall from the Aramco initial public offering, Jadaan told Bloomberg in an interview that “a lot of their allocation will go into the local economy, sectors that are promising, sectors that are large, require a large investment which the private sector cannot really invest on their own.”

Selling a stake in oil giant Aramco is the first major government privatization since Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, announced plans for an overhaul of the Saudi economy in 2016. The sale is the biggest IPO ever, and means the world’s most valuable listed company will be an oil company traded on the Saudi stock exchange and not a U.S. technology giant.