Saudi to link Sinai industrial zone with Neom, international players to bid for project
IPO WATCH- Saudi Arabia plans to float shares in its USD 500 bn sci-fi robot-infested city Neom, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) said over the weekend, according to Reuters. “Without a doubt, at the end of the day Neom will be floated in the markets. The first zone floated in the public markets. It’s as if you float the city of New York,” he said on the sidelines of the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh. “The first capitalist city in the world … this is the unique thing that will be revolutionary,” added MbS. Neom will join Aramco as another major IPO of the Saudi reform agenda. On the latter, MbS confirmed that the Aramco listing was on track for 2018, but the listing details are still under discussion.
It turns out that Saudi Arabia had apparently signed an agreement with Egypt last year to develop an industrial zone in Sinai order to “link it with Neom,” according to statements by MbS picked up by Bloomberg. “Neom will have a lot of ports. Some of them in Saudi Arabia and some of them in Egypt,” he added. The agreement would have seen the establishment of a freezone in North Sinai which would be connected to Neom.
…MbS also said he is in talks with major companies, including Amazon and Alibaba, to invest in Neom. “We are talking with everyone … We have the ‘who’s who’ from around the world engaging in this,” he says. Swiss engineering group ABB is “confident” it will get a slice of the USD 500 bn project. Bloomberg apparently cannot get enough of the idea, running an interview with MbS in which he tells everyone that they can go booze in Egypt and Jordan and not in Neom (we wonder what the Bender the alcoholic robot from Futurama would say about that) and a few infographics on the city. Meanwhile, Reuters Breakingviews’ Rob Cox says the plan for Neom is “so bonkers it just might work.”