Saudi’s Apicorp to acquire shipping asset soon
MANAMA, November 20, 2015
Saudi Arabia-based Arab Petroleum Investments Corp (Apicorp) plans to acquire a shipping asset and could close that deal either year-end or in the first quarter of 2016, its chairman told Reuters on Thursday.
"The pipeline is full. There are plenty of opportunities and actually you may hear something in the near future, a new acquisition, a new transaction we will be involved in so we are always looking," Aabed Al-Saadoun said on the sidelines of an Apicorp event in Manama.
"We are still in the phase of credit committee approval and then we need to go to the board.
"I can give you a hint: it is in shipping. I think it could be end of the year or next quarter (first quarter of next year)," he said when asked about when the deal would close.
Sadoun said it was one of several deals that Apicorp was evaluating.
"One of elements reinforcing our financing structure is the sukuk (Islamic bonds) we just issued, that should help us getting competitive pricing of loans where we can deploy them in new investment," he said.
Separately, Sadoun told Al Arabiya TV that Apicorp hoped to issue one or two debt deals in the coming year.
"We hope next year to have one or two offerings around $1 billion and we expect, God permitting, that prices will be better than they were during our first offering," he told Al Arabiya.
Apicorp, owned by the governments of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, debuted in the international bond market in late October and raised $500 million through a sukuk issue.
Asked if Apicorp would exit any investment, Sadoun said: "We are a long-term investor, a long-term investor doesn't really get so much bothered with the cyclicality or downturn of prices.
"We have investments in areas where they suffer some of the instability like Libya and Egypt but we can have enough patience to wait and see how things will improve and correct themselves."
Apicorp has assets worth around $6 billion, Sadoun said. - Reuters
