Saturday 6 April 2019

#Saudi Oil Giant Set for $10B Debt Deal Touted by Jamie Dimon - Bloomberg

Saudi Oil Giant Set for $10B Debt Deal Touted by Jamie Dimon - Bloomberg:

In a bond sale closely watched by investors globally, Saudi Aramco and its bankers are preparing to kick off what could be at least a $10 billion offering next week. Early indications suggest investors are already crowding in.

A message circulated among investors on Friday said interest in the most highly anticipated sale of the year already totaled more than $26 billion, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. The state-owned oil giant and bankers spent the last week drumming up support for its debut offering at presentations in cities ranging from New York and Chicago to Singapore and Tokyo.

The success of the sale is hugely important for banks, such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., that are working on the company’s behalf. They are eager to run an initial public offering by Aramco -- the world’s most profitable company -- if and when it comes, which would bring lucrative fees for the selected banks. In a rare appearance that underlines the bond sale’s significance, JPMorgan’s Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon spoke at a lunch in New York Thursday to market the deal, according to one of the people.

Carlos Ghosn Arrest Was Tactical Move to Probe Money Flows - Bloomberg

Carlos Ghosn Arrest Was Tactical Move to Probe Money Flows - Bloomberg:

Soon after Carlos Ghosn was taken into custody last fall, kicking off a bizarre legal odyssey that’s transfixed the automotive world, some wondered whether the financial crimes he’d been accused of were serious enough to warrant the shocking arrest of Nissan Motor Co.’s fabled chairman.

Turns out that was just the opening act. The initial arrest last November -- over what some viewed as a relatively minor charge of understating compensation -- was a tactical move to buy time to analyze money flowing to and from Oman, according to people familiar with the matter. Additional charges followed. Nissan executives have since been cooperating with Tokyo prosecutors and received plea agreements in at least two instances, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing private matters.

The ousted auto titan is now facing far more serious charges that he enriched himself via a web of complex financial transactions involving business partners in Oman and Saudi Arabia, as well as in his ancestral home of Lebanon, where he’s still lionized as a visionary.

The week in energy: #Saudi Aramco draws back the curtain | Financial Times

The week in energy: Saudi Aramco draws back the curtain | Financial Times:

Some people are excited about the possibility that The Winds Of Winter, the long-awaited new instalment in George R R Martin’s series of novels A Song of Ice and Fire, might at last be published in 2019. In the energy world, though, the publishing event of the year has already arrived, in the shape of Saudi Aramco’s bond prospectus. The 469-page document issued on Monday, intended for potential buyers in the company’s first-ever international bond sale, offered an unprecedented insight into the details of its finances and operations.

The prospectus still left plenty of unanswered questions, as David Sheppard and Robert Smith noted in the Financial Times, including the company’s plans for future borrowings and dividend payments to the Saudi government. But even so, the prospectus revealed more to the world about Saudi Aramco than this chronically reticent company had ever disclosed before, including its staggering net income of $111bn last year. A nice set of charts from the FT’s Lex column, showing some comparisons between Saudi Aramco and other large energy companies and oil-producing regions, really only began to scratch the surface of the information that was published.