TNK-BP deal resulted from confluence of interests between AAR and Rosneft, Alfa co-owner says
MOSCOW. April 3 (Interfax) - The TNK-BP deal was the result of a confluence of interests between the Alfa-Access-Renova (ARR) consortium and Rosneft , former TNK-BP shareholder and co-owner of Alfa Group, German Khan, said in an interview with the television channel RBC-TV.
For Rosneft, he said, "the right concept was that if you buy 50% it would make sense to buy 100%. We were ready for that sort of a deal. Here our interests and the interests of Rosneft coincided. The product was our deal for TNK-BP," Khan said.
"It's not that we didn't want to work with Rosneft. The deal between BP and Rosneft was put the conditions in place for our deal. We had a choice, to remain in a partnership with a state company. Clearly Rosneft, which works actively in the Russian market, would have tried to dominate more in the management process. Potentially we could have had some friction over dividends and some other issues. We thought it would be more pragmatic to get a fair price and take advantage of the situation to pull out [of TNK-BP] together with BP," he said.
Khan said Alfa Group was "generally pleased with the TNK-BP deal, considers the price to be fair." "Otherwise we would not have done the deal," he said.
Khan said he hoped Rosneft would e able to preserve TNK-BP's potential and multiply it by merging with Rosneft. He said regarding the potential for the merged company's capitalization that this depended on the investment environment. "Rosneft's assets, like those of TNK-BP, are mostly located in Russia and the lowering coefficients that apply to the whole Russian market come into play. Those investors who believe in changing the investment environment in Russia see growth potential from the very fact that Rosneft is undervalued. Maybe this [Rosneft] will be a very good, interesting investment," Khan said.