Sechin sale of Rosneft. Sechin lied to Putin about foreign investment. The Central Bank will smooth foreign exchange intervention

A 19.5% stake in Rosneft has been sold to a consortium of Glencore trader and Qatar Investment Authority investment fund for 10.5 billion euros, Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin said on Thursday evening at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

The deal came as a surprise to market participants: most observers considered it most likely that a minority stake in Rosneftegaz would be bought out by Rosneft itself. The reason for this was the low interest in the deal on the part of investors, who are well aware that minority shareholders in Russia do not influence the actual management of state-owned companies. In the 2000s, this was clearly shown by the experience of acquiring a minority stake in Gazprom from the German E.On RuhrGas AG (Germany), and in the 2010s, BP became a shareholder of Rosneft: two representatives of the British oil major were on the board of directors of Igor's company Sechina did not change anything in her life.

As a rule, foreign investors become minority shareholders in private Russian companies, where there is a higher chance of gaining influence on decision-making. Thus, in September 2015, the Chinese Silk Road Fund (SRF) acquired a 9.9% stake in Yamal LNG, whose shareholders are Novatek (50.1%), French Total (20%) and Chinese CNPC (20 %). In December 2015, the Chinese Sinopec bought a 10% stake in Sibur. Six months later, the Russian-Chinese intergovernmental commission approved a proposal to sell another 10% stake in Sibur to an investor from China: either the CDP-Capital investment company, which is a division of the state-owned China Development Bank, or the Silk Road Fund.

Another reason for the low interest of investors was financial difficulties Rosneft: according to the results of the first half of 2016, the company's total debt on short-term and long-term loans amounted to 2.9 trillion rubles. (accounting data according to IFRS). Because of the sanctions, Rosneft is forced to resort to loans from Chinese banks and companies: in particular, it received 1.9 trillion rubles. as an advance payment under a long-term contract for the supply of oil to China (reporting data for the first half of 2016), as well as 940 billion rubles. from China Development Bank Corporation (reporting data for the second quarter of 2016). In particular, at the expense of these funds, Rosneft acquired a controlling stake in Bashneft in October for 329.7 billion rubles.

For these reasons, the most likely contender for the acquisition of a minority stake was Rosneft itself: for the purchase, the company could use 600 billion rubles, which were received from the bonds placed on December 5. Officially, Rosneft announced that these funds will be used for foreign projects and debt refinancing. However, it cannot be ruled out that the attracted 600 billion rubles. were lent to a consortium of Glencore and Qatar Investment Authority. In addition, Glencore paid for the purchase of only 0.54% of Rosneft shares from its own funds - the remaining 18.96% were purchased through loans and Qatar Investment Authority funds, the trader said in an official statement.

If the assumption is confirmed that the 600 billion rubles received by Rosneft from the placement of bonds were lent to a consortium of Glencore and Qatar Investment Authority, it will become clear why foreign investors were attracted to the deal.

Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin reported to President Vladimir Putin on the sale of a 19.5% stake in the company for €10.5 billion.

The buyers were Glencore and the sovereign fund Qatar Investment Authority, which will receive 9.75% of Rosneft each

$17.5 billion in two months

Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin reported to President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin on the completion of the deal to privatize the company, according to the Kremlin website.

The budget will receive €10.5 billion from privatization (721.25 billion rubles at the exchange rate of the Central Bank on December 7), Putin said. And together with a controlling stake in Bashneft, which Rosneft bought on October 12 for $5.3 billion, $17.5 billion, he added.

“Even in the first part, this is the largest privatization deal, the largest sale and acquisition in the oil and gas sector in the world for the outgoing 2016,” Putin stressed.

The buyers of 19.5% of Rosneft were a consortium of the world's largest trading company Glencore and the sovereign Qatar Investment Authority (as of June, it had $335 billion under management).

“I hope that their arrival in the management bodies will improve corporate procedures, the transparency of the company and, accordingly, will ultimately lead to an increase in capitalization”, said the president.

Glencore and Qatar Investment Authority will receive 50% each in this consortium, Sechin specified (quote from RIA Novosti). That is, the effective share of each buyer is 9.75%. This is the third largest package after the state-owned Rosneftegaz (its share will decrease from 69.5% to 50% plus three shares) and BP (19.75%).

What do you need to know in light of this news?

I'll show you some charts and graphs about privatization, foreign ownership, and profit sharing, and you'll decide what to do with this set of facts.

Fixed assets of Russia by form of ownership:

Source of Rosstat, if anything: statistical yearbooks of different years - section "National Wealth".

Almost nothing remained in the hands of the state. There is something else in the fuel and energy industry and that's it. And they are now actively selling this something, like Bashneft and Rosneft.

It is also important to understand here that private property immediately goes under foreign jurisdiction:

This is to the myth that supposedly Putin stopped the sale of our Motherland. He did not stop it - he only strengthened it under the propaganda about getting up from his knees and so on.

Now how is the profit from the sale of our national wealth and the future of our children divided:

So think for yourself: should we rejoice in the sale of almost 20% of the shares of Rosneft, which has fallen in price, to Qatar - the sponsor of terrorists in the Middle East, as they say.

Several weeks of business trips abroad for the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, led to an unexpected result: a 19.5% stake in the oil company Glencore and the Qatar Investment Fund. But there are too many unknowns in the deal announced last night, and the diverging "testimony" of the parties is still more confusing. It is not clear who exactly bought and in what proportion: Sechin told Vladimir Putin that the distribution of shares in the consortium between Glencore and the Qataris will be 50/50, while Glencore claims that only 0.54% of the shares will end up in his indirect ownership Rosneft. It is unclear how much they paid: €10.5 billion according to the Kremlin versus €10.2 billion according to Glencore itself. It is not clear who was the seller: the state-owned Rosneftegaz or Rosneft itself through an interim buyout of a stake from a shareholder, Igor Sechin is the main character in both companies.

Nevertheless, some things can already be stated with certainty. Firstly, Vladimir Putin still strongly disliked the idea of ​​Rosneft owning its shares, as a result of which it was decided to look for an outside investor. The image costs of “directorial privatization” (causing direct analogies with the early 1990s, when the directors of former Soviet enterprises resorted to all sorts of tricks in order to get their property as a result of privatization) outweighed the hardware capabilities of Igor Sechin. In a sense, it can be argued that ex-Minister of Economy Alexei Ulyukaev, who tried to burden Rosneft with obligations to further resell this stake to third-party investors and met with resistance along the way, suffered in vain. Against this background, the previous information about Putin's attempts to personally find third-party buyers in the person of, say, the head of Lukoil, Vagit Alekperov, looks logical.

Secondly, in the end, nevertheless, an intermediate scheme was found: speaking frankly, Glencore is not such an “outsider” for Rosneft. The companies are closely linked by long-standing large-scale contractual and financial relations; in 2013-2015, Rosneft received prepayments from Glencore for future deliveries in the amount of up to $5 billion. By the way, this factor was immediately associated with the sale of 19.5% of Rosneft shares, and with Rosneft's recent mysterious and super-secret placement of bonds for 600 billion rubles: one of the versions is that Rosneft, by transferring its shares, will offset debts to Glencore on an advance payment, and the funds raised through bonds will go to the budget.

That is, frankly speaking, one way or another, all the same Russian money worked to purchase the package, and “finding a large foreign investor” is an exaggeration.

In exchange for the new deal, Glencore received a 5-year offtake oil supply contract from Rosneft - according to the company, with a volume of 220,000 barrels per day, which will improve its portfolio well. Well, the Qatar Investment Fund, in turn, is the largest shareholder of Glencore (owns a share of about 9%) and suffered greatly in last years from failed investments and high debts of an international trader. Qatari investors will clearly benefit from the growth in Glencore's share price that can be expected from this deal.

That is, in fact, we can say that instead of real strategic investors, Rosneft found a comfortable portfolio investor for its shares, which has no goals related to gaining access to Russian reserves, developing fields, etc., and went for a deal because of a number of favorable tactical conditions (including bonuses offered by Rosneft itself, such as the mentioned offtake contract).

Thirdly, as mentioned earlier, a real strategic investor for the state-owned stake in Rosneft could not be found. Neither Chinese nor other Asian oil and gas companies, as predicted, they did not fall for this proposal - the reasons for this are explained in detail at the link above, but the main thing is that in Russian conditions, minority stakes do not give real rights to management, especially in strategic state-owned enterprises.

As a result, the authorities were forced to sell the stake to a connected trader, promising him some bonuses for this and attracting its main shareholder, the Qatari Investment Fund, to the case, which was clearly burdened by the fall in the value of shares and debt problems of Glencore and, of course, is now happy to participate in saving this investment. . There are advantages to buying these shares: Rosneft in recent times increased dividend payments, but there is still room for improvement - dividends are far behind the level of private companies per barrel of production. So Glencore and the Qataris expect a good dividend flow from this package (probably in the region of $400 million per year or even higher). BP, which owns a 19.75% stake in Rosneft, has been very pleased with dividends lately, they helped it improve its financial performance quite well.

But there is also a big minus: as shown by the lack of interest of strategic investors in Rosneft, the package being sold is illiquid. It will be almost impossible to sell it - and, by the way, from the point of view of strategic investors, the story that the shares of Rosneft were eventually sold to a related trader for Russian money is not very attractive for the image and once again emphasizes that in Russia, instead of full property rights we often deal with a facade various schemes designed to cover up real control by state players. By the way, pay attention to how Glencore hastened to assure investors that it would own only a small stake of 0.54% of Rosneft shares: in fact, the policy of a trader burdened with debts has recently been aimed precisely at the sale of assets. and not for the purchase of new expensive illiquid assets.

Many commentators explain the entry of the Qatari Investment Fund into the deal by some strategic interest of Qatar in Russian oil and gas projects, but this explanation seems to be an exaggeration. Qatar has so far refused to enter into Russian projects and has shown no practical interest in them, despite the fact that many Russian officials and businessmen have been trying to persuade the Qataris for years.

Attempts to link Qatar’s participation in Rosneft with the implementation of an agreement with OPEC on reducing oil production also look strange - there is no direct connection at all, the agreement with OPEC will either be fulfilled or not, the presence of a minority stake in one of the Russian oil companies is in no way it doesn't affect. And the Qatari Investment Fund, in principle, has other tasks, in its portfolio the main investments are not related to oil and gas - on the contrary, oil and gas revenues are invested in other, often more high-tech, areas. So, most likely, everything is rather banal: it is simply beneficial for Qatar to improve the quality of its problematic investments in Glencore through the current deal.

Last week, Igor Ivanovich Sechin surprised everyone again: on Thursday, like a bolt from the blue: it was announced that 19.5% of Rosneft shares had been sold - and not to Rosneft itself, as many market participants assumed, but to a sovereign fund Qatar and the world's largest trader Glencore.

Everything connected with Rosneft lately is more like lightning-fast special operations than Western mergers&aquisitions. In the West, Sun Tzu's The Art of War is popular among investment bankers, and sometimes it seems that Rosneft takes the thesis "business is war" literally.

Once! - sat under house arrest Yevtushenkov; once! - and suddenly they announced the sale of Bashneft to Rosneft, time! - and detained the head of the Ministry of Economy Ulyukaev.

Actually, it is now clear why Ulyukaev was detained. After such a loss of a fighter, the economic bloc of the government hardly dared to ask any questions about the deal.

True, instead of the economic bloc of the Russian government, it looks like the United States will ask them: White House Press Secretary Josh Ernst said that the US Treasury will study the deal. This statement, apparently, had such an effect on Glencore that he immediately issued a press release in which he clarified that the agreement with Rosneft had not yet been signed, but was on last step negotiations." In addition, Glencore clarified that out of a total deal of $10.2 billion, it is only putting up $300 million of its own money (corresponding to a 0.54% stake) in exchange for a five-year agreement that gives Glencore access to 220 thousand barrels of oil daily.

First, Bashneft was taken away from Yevtushenkov. Then it was suddenly sold to Rosneft. The victory of Rosneft was explained by the need to replenish the budget, and Rosneft offered the most: 330 billion rubles.

It was a strange explanation, because Rosneft is a state-owned company. And the payment of such a large amount is reflected in the financial condition of any company. In particular, dividends paid to the state are reduced by this amount, not to mention taxes. That is, if money from a state-owned company migrated to the state budget, this does not mean that the amount has changed.

In parallel with Bashneft, the state was going to sell 19.5% of Rosneft. These deals went hand in hand. main reason this sale was called the desire to replenish the budget.

This reason looked strange in a country that had buried $15 billion into the ground for the construction of South Stream even before the agreement on it was signed. In addition, Rosneft is under sanctions, and this greatly affects its value. It was completely incomprehensible why the Kremlin was so eager to sell the state-owned 19.5% of Rosneft to private hands in such an unfavorable situation. And this week it all became clear.

On Wednesday, Rosneft placed bonds worth 600 billion rubles on the market. - that is, for most of the amount that had to be paid for 19.5%. Exactly the day after this placement, Igor Sechin came to Putin and announced that he had two buyers for 19.5% of Rosneft - ​Glencore and Qatar.

Both of these globally respected organizations have in common that they are not transparent.

Simply put, within the framework of a legally completely impeccable scheme and, of course, with full observance of financial politeness, they can act as frontiers in exchange for certain services: for example, in exchange for an oil supply contract.

All that we know, in the bottom line, boils down to the following.

For some reason, the Kremlin was in a hurry to sell Bashneft to Ro-Neft, and then sell 19.5% of Ros-Neft to private hands.

That the motivation put forward - to receive $15 billion in the budget, given the insignificant amount of this amount compared to at least spending on the Olympics ($50 billion) and the scope of budget theft, does not seem logical.

That exactly on the eve of the announcement of the sale, Rosneft borrowed 600 billion rubles. That the size of this loan for the Russian market is enormous and that the loan was carried out by closed subscription and was placed in half an hour.

That Glencore said it was investing only $300 million in the deal.

That the rest of the money is provided by the Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo, a longtime partner of Gazprombank, a collector of Russian icons and, in general, a great friend of the Kremlin, whom you can rely on in all sorts of sensitive issues.

That 300 million dollars plus 600 billion rubles. just correspond to approximately the amount that must be paid for a 19.5% stake in Rosneft.

What about Qatar (and Saudi Arabia) we are waging a proxy war in Syria, because the real sponsors of the Syrian opposition are by no means the United States and Europe, but Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

There are a thousand and one ways in the world to pay for stocks state company the money of the state company itself, but in such a way that the shares go to a private person. For example: a company places bonds, invests the money received in a certain fund, and this fund is then fronted by an influential but non-transparent international corporation.

So the question is very simple: who is actually being sold 19.5% of Rosneft shares in front of everyone immediately after Rosneft placed a loan of 600 billion rubles on the market?

Photo: kremlin.ru

The head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the completion of the deal to privatize Rosneft. 19.5% of its shares were bought by a consortium of Glencore companies and the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar. The deal amounted to 10.5 billion euros, the money will go to the budget of the Russian Federation. According to Sechin, the consortium members received equal shares as part of the privatization. Putin called the deal "the largest on the global energy market in 2016." The President also stressed that the controlling stake in Rosneft would remain in the hands of the state.

The scheme of financing from the trader will be as follows. He will invest €300 million of his own funds, as well as provide guarantees to a structure completely "fenced" from the Glencore business, which will have to attract the bulk of the necessary financing from banks. If Glencore gets half of Rosneft's stake, it will need €4.8 billion in debt financing to complete the deal. As the trader emphasizes, his participation in the transaction depends on the attraction of this financing, which, if successful, can take place in mid-December.

For its part, Glencore will receive an offtake contract to buy oil from Rosneft for five years with an annual volume of 220 thousand barrels per day (11 million tons). In addition, the trader and Rosneft are going to develop a strategic partnership in infrastructure projects, logistics and global trading.

Thus, as "Kommersant" suggested, Glencore did not take himself too high risks on this deal and, apparently, was attracted to it at the last moment. At the same time, the trader's assessment of the transaction at €10.2 billion raises the question of how such a sale meets the criteria of the directive issued earlier by the government, in which the minimum price for Rosneft's stake was set at 710.8 billion rubles. At the rate of the Central Bank on December 8, the volume of the transaction corresponds to 698.7 billion rubles. The head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, noted that the transaction was carried out at exchange quotations on December 6 - at that time, the transaction amount, at the Central Bank rate on December 7, was 700.6 billion rubles.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, commenting on the deal, said that about 700 billion rubles would go to the 2016 budget, as expected. “This money will allow us not to attract funds from the Reserve Fund,” said the head of the Ministry of Finance. “Money, obviously, will come in, we will use this money. Therefore, everything that we planned in the budget in terms of obtaining privatization money, we will do everything, we will get everything.”

The head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Igor Artemiev, said that the deal to buy a 19.5% stake in Rosneft was perfectly legal. According to Peskov, "the Kremlin had nothing to do with preparatory work", and "President Putin did not have any contacts on the deal either." "Sechin and his team were personally involved in the preparation, which he actually reported to the president yesterday," Peskov said.

After the announcement of the results of the privatization deal, Rosneft shares hit a new all-time high and immediately went up by 6%.

The Italian bank Intesa will become the true source of financing for the privatization of Rosneft, and with it the federal budget of the Russian Federation, which will provide the bulk of the funds, Reuters reports citing sources.

The bank has a long history of cooperation with Rosneft and has been looking for applicants for its shares since the beginning of the year.

The involvement of Glencore and the Qatari fund looks like a "cover" to the deal, a market source told finanz. The scheme may look like this, he suggests: a company (Rosneft) places bonds and invests money in a certain fund, which then buys its own shares, receiving a commission for this - similar mechanisms were used during the privatization of the 1990s, when the purchase of companies was paid in cash from the same companies.

Rosneft was able to get foreign currency in the West, and the federal budget deficit, with the help of an Italian bank, was essentially financed by the ECB,” another market source told finanz.

finanz.ru

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