The world's most valuable company isn't Apple or Google’s owner, Alphabet. It's an outfit in aleague of its own: Aramco, as Saudi Arabian Oil Co. is better known. This sprawling state-owned producer, sitting atop one-fifth of the globe's petroleum reserves, pumps more crude than the top four publicly traded oil companies combined. It's valued at more than $2 trillion— or about four times the biggest technology giants — though no one really knows what it’s worth because its profits are shrouded in secrecy. The veil could soon be lifted as the Saudi government is planning a partial privatization of Aramco to create a war chest and prepare the country for the post-hydrocarbon age.

https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/saudi-aramco

Well, if you're going to count governments, how about the US military, which has assets far in excess of $2 Trillion.  Or the BLM, which controls over 1 million square km of US land (1/8 of the land in the USA), making it worth many times that $2 Trillion.  Fortunately, neither one will ever go through a charade of privatization.

 

I'm sure some suckers would buy a percentage of Aramco if and when it comes to an IPO, but what would they really be getting?  No say in the company, no guaranty that their profits won't be given away to appease the masses, and no way to know what they're really buying.  

 

Sign me up for some of that...