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10 I Companies & Markets bne October 2017
Rosneft sells 14% stake to China’s CEFC in biggest ever Russo-Chinese deal
Ben Aris in Berlin
Russia’s turn to the east got more serious on August 8, after Russia’s leading oil company Rosneft announced the biggest ever investment by China into Russia
in a deal to sell a 14.16% stake in Rosneft to China Energy Company (CEFC) for $9.1bn, Reuters reports.
The Chinese company is buying the shares from a consortium of Glencore and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) that participated in the murky privatization of a 19.5% stake
of Rosneft last December. Billed as a historic privatization deal, it later transpired the deal was probably more of a loan by Russia’s friends to get the government through a very difficult year when the state didn't have the money to cover the budget deficit.
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Glencore and QIA will retain stakes of 0.5% and 4.7%
in Rosneft respectively. The deal has been on the cards for several months. First there were reports that Russia could buy back the Rosneft stake from Qatar. Then reports surfaced in August that China was in talks to buy a stake.
“The December privatisation was little more than a complicated loan mechanism”