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May 10, 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 6
Russian billionaire Fridman closes major Wintershall energy joint venture deal
German BASF gets 67% in the new company, with an option on another 5.7% shares, while LetterOne gets 33% of the shares. The full integration of the companies is expected in within a year, with an IPO planned for the second half of 2020.
Wintershall DEA will operated as a limited com- pany with headquarters in Kassel and Hamburg, managed by a board of six. The size of the deal is undisclosed, but previous reports have put the merged company's valuation at €10bn-20bn.
"Despite being the largest oil and gas company in Europe, the combined Wintershall DEA will still produce less oil than Gazprom Neft, Russia’s third-largest oil company. Half of Wintershall’s production comes from Russia, but DEA does not produce in Russia. Because the share of Russian production will drop in the combined company, there is the potential to explore new Russian deals, the general director of Wintershall (now
head of the combined company) said in April," BMB commented on the deal.
Wintershall DEA has four projects in Russia at the Urengoy gas field and the Yuzhno-Russkoye oil field. It also has an interest in the operator of Nord Stream and an obligation to fund Nord Stream-2.
Fridman's Alfa was part of a consortium of Rus- sian oligarchs AAR (Alfa Access Renova) that held a major share in the Russo-British oil joint venture TNK-BP that they sold to state-owned oil major Rosneft in March 2013 in a $55bn deal. Renova is the investment vehicle of Viktor Vek- selberg, who was sanctioned along with fellow oligarch Oleg Deripaska last week and is a close business associate of Fridman’s.
Fridman took his share of the proceeds and set up LetterOne in London and since then has been trying to get back into the oil business, as well as making other profitable investments.