Saudi Arabia today said 4pc of shares in state-controlled Aramco has been transferred to Sanabil Investments, a unit of the country's PIF sovereign wealth fund.
The announcement, made by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, comes around a year after the state shifted a same-sized stake to the PIF, in a move it said was aimed at supporting efforts to restructure the economy and to diversify away from oil.
The transfer cuts the state's shareholding in Aramco to 90.18pc, from more than 94pc previously, state news agency SPA said. Saudi Arabia listed 1.5pc of Aramco's shares in a partial initial public offering (IPO) on the domestic Tadawul stock exchange in late 2019. The government did not disclose the value of this latest transaction. Last year's transfer of 4pc to the PIF was valued at the time at "close to $80bn".
Today's move will further strengthen the sovereign wealth fund's financial position and credit rating in the medium term, the government said, and take the state a step closer to delivering on the crown prince's 2021 pledge to boost the value of the PIF's assets to 4 trillion Saudi riyals ($1.07 trillion) by 2025.
The PIF, which is responsible for diversifying Saudi Arabia's revenue sources away from oil by investing in other sectors, did not say what it planned to do with the stock.
Aramco, which last month reported record profits for 2022, said this latest transaction will not have any effect on its "operations, strategy, dividends distribution policy or governance framework."
