Billionaires seek sale of TNK-BP
The billionaire co-owners of Anglo-Russian oil venture TNK-BP would be willing to sell their stake to British oil major BP for cash and stock to put an end to a bitter shareholder conflict.
That was the position presented by Mikhail Fridman, one of the quartet of investors who own half of Russia’s third-largest oil company through the AAR consortium, to meetings in New York and Boston with large institutions that own BP stock.
“The message Mikhail Fridman delivered was that the partnership in its current form has run its course,” AAR CEO Stan Polovets said of the meetings this past week, which followed up on a series investor briefings in London in June.
“The shareholders need to find a way to realign ownership interests and eliminate the internal contradictions that are tearing TNK-BP apart.”