Rosneft offers lowball $1.5bn for TNK-BP minorities

Oil group Rosneft is to buy the remaining shares in TNK-BP Holding for a fraction of the price it paid BP and a group of oligarchs for their stakes, in a worrying development for minority shareholders in Russian companies.

Rosneft oil group bought the holding company and its parent TNK-BP last year in a $55 billion takeover that created the world’s largest publicly traded oil company by output.

Minority shareholders own about 5 per cent of the unit, now renamed RN Holding.

The deal to buy them out for about $1.5 billion was announced by Rosneft on Monday, after months of tough talk and refusal to acquire the shares had sent jitters through the investor community and raised questions over corporate governance in Russia. – (Reuters)