MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Russia sells 19.5% of Rosneft - ‘biggest privatization deal of 2016,’ says Putin

Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin reached an agreement with private investors and a Qatari fund to sell 19.5% of shares

Russian President Vladimir Putin labeled the sale of 19.5% of state-owned oil giant Rosneft's shares to the natural resource trader Glencore International and a Qatari sovereign wealth fund for over $11 billion was “the biggest sale and acquisition in the world’s oil and gas sector in 2016,” the official Kremlin website reported Wednesday.

 Putin made those statements after a meeting with Rosneft CEO, Igor Sechin, where the president was briefed about the closing of the share package sale which will earn the Russian state budget more than a trillion rubles ($17.5 billion) and the acquisition of the Russian Bashneft oil company by Rosneft in October.

Under the deal signed with Glencore and the Qatari fund, the natural resources trader and the fund acquired 19.5 percent of the oil company’s shares for €10.5 billion ($11.3 billion). The two buyers formed a joint consortium, in which both of them hold a 50 percent stake, to buy the Rosneft share package. As a result, both of them got 9.75 percent of Rosneft shares each. Together, they hold the third largest stake of Rosneft shares as more than 50 percent still belong to the company’s largest shareholder – the state-owned oil transportation agency Rosneftegaz, while another 19.75 percent is owned by BP.

Sechin also informed Putin that Rosneft held talks with more than 30 companies, sovereign wealth funds, professional investors and financial institutions from Europe, Americas, Middle East and Asia before signing the deal. Putin congratulated the Rosneft CEO on the successful closure of the deal and expressed hope that the attraction of new investors and managers would “improve corporate procedures, increase transparency and contribute to the capitalization growth.”

Rosneft is Russia’s biggest oil company with the majority owned by the Russian government. In March 2013, after buying TNK-BP, Rosneft became the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. It also purchased 50.755 percent of the shares in the Bashneft oil company, one of the largest Russian crude oil producers, on October 14.

The signing comes as the Kremlin looks to raise money to tackle Russia's biggest budget deficit since 2010. The initial goal was to reduce it to three percent of GDP, but different agencies estimate the deficit could hit 3.6-3.9 percent this year, slowly reducing to 3.1 percent next year and 2.2 percent in 2018.

Meanwhile, Glencore took a more cautious approach. “Once the transaction is entered into, it will be conditional on the subsequent finalisation of all relevant financing, guarantee and other agreements and would be expected to close in mid-December,” Glencore said in a statement. “New 5 year offtake agreement with Rosneft representing a sizeable additional 220,000 bbls/day for the Glencore Marketing business,” the statement said.

US and EU financial and technological sanctions imposed on Rosneft do not formally ban US and European companies from purchasing a stake in Rosneft. However, many players from the United States and European Union were wary about investing in the shares of the Russian oil giant, assessing their risks as too big.