Liam Denning, Columnist

Saudi Aramco Should Stay Out of the Sun

Independence from the state is a bigger IPO lure than alternative energy.

March 6, 2017 at 2:08 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

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IPO prospectuses always come with an invisible set of rose-colored spectacles (even video-enabled ones these days). Now Saudi Aramco, aiming for the biggest IPO ever, also wants to hand out some green-shaded ones.

Bloomberg News reported this weekend that Aramco hopes a mooted $5 billion investment in solar panels will tempt the sort of investor who might otherwise pass on a company that supposedly has more than 10 times the proved oil and gas reserves of Exxon Mobil Corp.