Through a combination of bribing local retail investors via preferential loans , threatening wealthy Saudis with a re-run of their treatment in the Ritz Carlton in 2017 , and inveigling the two principal credit ratings agencies to toe the exact Saudi line on the ‘lack of significance’ of the ‘Houthi’ attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais, the Saudis finally sold off a much smaller part of Aramco to a far narrower group of people for a lot less total value than it wanted. The unequivocal facts remain that the Saudi state’s flagship oil and gas company is an omni-toxic value proposition from a myriad of perspectives even before the risk premium of last week’s execution of Iran’s Qassem Soleimani is fully factored in. Consequently, much of the smart money is now looking to short sell Aramco. Quite aside from the fact that its position as the key corporate tool of […]