Ksenia Galouchko and Anna
Shiryaevskaya
TNK-BP gained the most in more than a week as
investors speculated BP Plc (BP/)’s billionaire partners in
Russia’s third-largest oil producer will enter a bidding war
against OAO Rosneft for the U.K. explorer’s entire stake.
TNK-BP jumped 2 percent to 84.3 rubles by the
close in Moscow, the biggest advance since Sept. 14. Rosneft, the
country’s biggest oil producer, dropped 2.3 percent to 204.18
rubles. BP last traded 1.8 percent lower at 438.05 pence in London.
Russia’s Micex Index slumped 2.4 percent.
AAR, the group representing the billionaires,
will make a binding cash offer to acquire the U.K. oil producer’s
entire 50 percent of the TNK-BP venture rather than the half of
BP’s holding it proposed to acquire in July, according to a person
with knowledge of the plans, who declined to be identified before
the bid is submitted. Rosneft, headed by President Vladimir Putin’s
former deputy for energy, Igor Sechin, is seeking as much as $15
billion in loans to buy BP out of the 50-50 venture, two people
said Sept. 19.
“The market is hopeful of some kind of bidding
war between Rosneft and AAR,” Julian Rimmer, a trader at CF Global
Trading, said by e-mail.
TNK-BP’s shares are also climbing on
bets the company will preserve its “high” dividends if AAR buys out
the stake, Sergey Vakhrameev, an analyst at IFC Metropol in Moscow,
said by phone.
The shareholders of TNK-BP approved a full-year
dividend of 9.96 rubles (32 cents) per common and preferred share
for 2011. That’s in addition to the 3.41 rubles a share TNK-BP
Holding (TNBP) paid out for the first half of 2011, the
Moscow-based company said in a June 28 statement. State-run Rosneft
will pay 7.53 rubles a share in 2011 dividends, the company said on
Sept. 18 in a regulatory filing.
“Although Rosneft as a state-owned company has
more money to win the bidding, some investors are hopeful that if
AAR wins, they will keep the high dividends,” Vakhrameev said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-26/tnk-bp-gains-after-billionaires-said-to-expand-bid-moscow-mover.html