UPDATE on the Below:
BP did exactly what it was told (from NYMEX Newswire):
Russian oil company OAO Rosneft beat Anglo-Russian oil firm TNK-BP Holdings in an auction for 9.44% of Rosneft shares held by the bankrupt OAO Yukos, placing a winning bid only 1.2% above the starting price. Rosneft agreed to pay 197.84 billion rubles ($7.61 billion), less than RUB3 billion above the starting price of RUB195.5 billion.
A spokeswoman for the former Yukos management called the auction a sham, saying the sale was part of a drawn-out and deliberate dismantling of the oil group for the benefit of state-controlled companies and the Kremlin. “We believe the whole process is rigged,” spokeswoman Claire Davidson said. “This is thefirst stage in the world’s largest expropriation.”
Auction organizers defended the sale, however, insisting the deal was transparent and legitimate. “I think this was an open process,” said Nikolai Lashkevich, spokesman for Yukos’s
official liquidator. Analysts said TNK-BP appeared to have participated in the auction as a diplomatic gesture to Russian authorities, who have sought to present the sale of Yukos’s assets
as open and fair. TNK-BP’s participation may have been intended to give the auction a sense of legitimacy, analysts said.
--------------------------------------------------
Russia needed another bidder, so they brought in BP. Here’s what’s going to happen: BP bids, BP loses to Rosneft, BP magically gets a favorable contract soon after. The good news is that at least Putin is still putting up some form of facade to appear legitimate instead of just taking the assets outright. Ultimately he's just putting the final pieces in place for when he steps down from running Russia from the Kremlin to running Europe from Gazprom.
BP did exactly what it was told (from NYMEX Newswire):
Russian oil company OAO Rosneft beat Anglo-Russian oil firm TNK-BP Holdings in an auction for 9.44% of Rosneft shares held by the bankrupt OAO Yukos, placing a winning bid only 1.2% above the starting price. Rosneft agreed to pay 197.84 billion rubles ($7.61 billion), less than RUB3 billion above the starting price of RUB195.5 billion.
A spokeswoman for the former Yukos management called the auction a sham, saying the sale was part of a drawn-out and deliberate dismantling of the oil group for the benefit of state-controlled companies and the Kremlin. “We believe the whole process is rigged,” spokeswoman Claire Davidson said. “This is thefirst stage in the world’s largest expropriation.”
Auction organizers defended the sale, however, insisting the deal was transparent and legitimate. “I think this was an open process,” said Nikolai Lashkevich, spokesman for Yukos’s
official liquidator. Analysts said TNK-BP appeared to have participated in the auction as a diplomatic gesture to Russian authorities, who have sought to present the sale of Yukos’s assets
as open and fair. TNK-BP’s participation may have been intended to give the auction a sense of legitimacy, analysts said.
--------------------------------------------------
Russia needed another bidder, so they brought in BP. Here’s what’s going to happen: BP bids, BP loses to Rosneft, BP magically gets a favorable contract soon after. The good news is that at least Putin is still putting up some form of facade to appear legitimate instead of just taking the assets outright. Ultimately he's just putting the final pieces in place for when he steps down from running Russia from the Kremlin to running Europe from Gazprom.
 clipped from www.nytimes.comMOSCOW, March 23 — BP said on Friday that it planned to bid against the state-owned oil giant Rosneft in a bankruptcy auction for assets of the Yukos oil company BP is bidding in the auction Tuesday through a subsidiary of its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, which is half-owned by Russian partners. some analysts speculated that TNK-BP had leant its name to the process to allow the auction to proceed in exchange for favorable treatment in other energy deals in Russia. For the auction to meet Russian bankruptcy rules, at least two bidders must participate. Until Friday, only the Rosneft subsidiary had formally expressed interest the same day TNK-BP announced the offer, Mr. Browne of BP was in Moscow for his second visit in three weeks the overseas management of Yukos, said the meeting between the chief executives of Rosneft and BP — the only two bidders — so close to the auction date could create the appearance of collusion.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment