What the other papers say this morning – 16 April 2014 April 15, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Market troubles dent Moelis flotation Boutique investment bank Moelis raised $163m from its US initial public offering after last-minute investor concerns forced it to shrink the size of its share sale and cut the price of the deal below its expected range. The IPO is the latest to come under pressure on the [...]
CNBC Comment: Russia’s economy looks set up for a fall March 3, 2014 DECADES of diplomacy ushered Moscow into the international tent. And in the interest of keeping the country inside, Western powers mostly seemed content to ignore Russian aggression across its borders and human rights violations within. But this not-so-Great Game of diplomacy only works when all sides are prepared to at least preserve the façade. Closer [...]
Russia’s Ukraine attack is end of Pax Americana March 3, 2014 THIS is the week Western foreign policy was finally exposed as a sham. Russia has started to invade Ukraine, an independent nation supposedly backed by the West, in what could be the most significant geopolitical crisis since 9/11, and what is anybody going to do about it? Nothing. Pax Americana had been on its death [...]
Khodorkovsky released as Putin’s regime loosens grip ahead of Winter Games December 20, 2013 Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, has been released after serving a prison sentence which lasted more than a decade. Official reports say he has already left the remote prison colony near the Arctic Circle, where he was incarcerated. Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to free Khodorkovsky, a former political rival, but many of Putin's [...]
BP weighs the risks of contamination from Russian oil October 18, 2012 MONEY isn’t everything. As the elaborate negotiations over TNK-BP’s ownership continue, BP finds itself in a sticky strategic position, despite a generous offer for its stake. The apparent $28bn bid from Rosneft for BP’s 50 per cent TNK-BP stake looks attractively priced and would enable the UK oil major to extricate itself from a less-than-ideal [...]
Lord Browne to advise $20bn oil and gas fund June 18, 2013 LORD Browne, the former boss of oil giant BP, has joined forces with Russia’s Alfa Group to advise the company on a new $20bn (£12.7bn) global oil and gas fund. The fund, known as the L1 Energy Fund, will be seeded with the proceeds of Alfa’s sale of its stake of TNK-BP, which netted it [...]
BP-led consortium signs £17bn Azerbaijan gas supply contract December 17, 2013 A CONSORTIUM of oil majors, including BP and Statoil, yesterday confirmed that they have signed a $28bn (£17.2bn) deal that will bring gas from Azerbaijan into Europe. The project aims to produce 120,000 barrels of condensate gas per day from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan – expanded from 50,000 barrels per day – over [...]
Russia cheers China deals October 22, 2013 RUSSIAN energy companies signed a slew of deals with China yesterday, seeking to lock in sales to fund costly production and pipeline projects that will direct exports away from Europe to Asia. The agreements, announced during a visit by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to Beijing, brought Igor Sechin, chief executive of state oil major Rosneft, [...]
Rosneft adds to Russian assets September 24, 2013 OIL FIRM Rosneft is acquiring Enel’s indirect stake in Russian gas producer SeverEnergia, valued at $1.8bn (£1.1bn), in its latest move to boost its presence in the gas market. State-owned Rosneft, the world’s top listed crude oil producer, has been aggressively expanding its gas business with a slew of purchases, including Russian gas company Itera [...]
Exillon Energy investor mulls takeover offer December 3, 2013 FTSE 250-listed oil explorer Exillon Energy’s second largest shareholder yesterday said it had approached the board to make a possible offer for the rest of the company. Hanberg Finance, which is owned by Russian billionaire entrepreneur Mikhail Gutseriev, currently holds a 14.9 per cent stake in Exillon. It is considering making a bid of at [...]