The initial public offering for a piece of the giant oil company could easily be the biggest ever, and stock markets around the world have been fighting hard for it.
LONDON — Stock markets around the world have been fighting hard for the chance to handle the stock market listing of Aramco, the giant oil company owned by the Saudi Arabian government.
But the New York Stock Exchange on Saturday gained an unusual public backer: President Trump.
In a tweet, Mr. Trump urged Saudi Arabia to pick the Big Board as the international venue for the initial public offering of Aramco. “ Important to the United States!” he wrote.
Other politicians have argued in favor of their homegrown stock exchanges, including Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, though they have done so privately. Mr. Trump, as is his habit, turned to Twitter to bolster the Big Board’s case.
Aramco, whose listing would easily be the biggest-ever I. P. O. and which is expected to be valued at several hundred billion dollars, is weighing which international stock market will list its shares.
The N.Y.S. E. has competed fiercely against foreign rivals, particularly the London Stock Exchange, for the privilege. Though Saudi officials have expressed support for choosing the New York market, which is considered to have the deepest pool of investor capital in the world, analysts say that an American listing could expose the Saudi government to lawsuits as well as stricter corporate regulations.
But the Trump administration has expressed interest in forging a tighter bond with the Saudi government, in part as a linchpin for efforts to forge a peace agreement for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr. Trump’s first overseas trip as president was to Riyadh, breaking with presidential precedent.
At a conference hosted by the Saudi government last month, Aramco officials said that they were still on track to take their company public in the second half of 2018. But while they are expected to list their company’s shares on the kingdom’s Tadawul stock exchange, they are still deciding which foreign market to choose for an international listing — if they do so at all.
Representatives for Aramco and the N.Y.S. E. declined to comment. But the N.Y.S. E.’s Twitter account retweeted Mr. Trump’s post and added, “We agree, the US capital markets are the best in the world.”
