New Delhi: Saudi Aramco chairman and Governor of the Kingdom's wealth fund Public Investment Fund, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, may be inducted on the board of Reliance Industries Ltd, a precursor to a USD 15 billion deal, reports said.
An announcement of Al-Rumayyan's induction on the RIL board or the board of the newly carved oil-to-chemical (O2C) unit may come as early as at the company's annual shareholder meeting on June 24.
"RIL's Annual General Meeting (AGM) has historically been a keenly watched event (previously attended by 3,000 shareholders when held in physical format and last year saw 300,000 concurrent viewers of the virtual AGM across 42 countries and 468 cities) given that it has been one of the top 3 companies by market capitalisation in India, has a large free float and a large public shareholding (more than 3 million non institutional shareholders)," brokerage HSBC Global Research said in a report.
And expectations are already built up for the AGM.
"Over the last year, new investors have joined RIL's digital and retail business at subsidiary level and RIL has formed new partnerships with global players like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Qualcomm etc. Investors now expect RIL to give direction to these businesses and announce groundbreaking products," it said, adding reports suggest that it will likely announce a new smartphone partnered with Google and its pricing.
"There is also expectation of some update on Saudi Aramco deal and speculation that the Chairman of Saudi Aramco may join RIL's board," it said. Both RIL and Saudi Aramco did not reply to emails sent for comments.