In 1912, long before he was prime minister, Winston Churchill made perhaps his most far-reaching contribution to world history. As first lord of the admiralty, he successfully argued that Britain's continuing naval power could only be assured if its ships would switch from coal to oil. Securing access to oil, particularly the huge reservoirs newly uncovered in the Middle East, would allow Britain to "raise the whole power and efficiency of the navy to a definitely higher level; better ships, better crews, higher economies, more intense forms of war power", was how Churchill described it. "Mastery itself was the prize of the venture."
Since Churchill's prescient bet, Middle East oil has remained the great prize of geopolitics. More than a century on, one iteration of this battle is being fought between the world's largest stock exchanges, each of which are bidding for a slice of Saudi Aramco's initial public offering (IPO), the largest listing in securities history. The enormity of the float - the state oil company is hoping for a $2 trillion price tag – is not the only remarkable thing about the proposed share sale. In fact, almost every facet of Saudi Arabia's decision to take its crown jewels public is unprecedented and could carry large ramifications for investors.
Logistics and objections