Glencore sells all but 0.5% of its Rosneft stake to CEFC China Energy
London — Glencore’s move last week to sell most of its stake in Russian oil major Rosneft to Chinese conglomerate CEFC China Energy is eliciting admiration from the Swiss oil trader’s rivals — and relief from its bankers. To rivals, it appears to be a clever deal by Glencore’s boss Ivan Glasenberg, who had initially invested €300m of Glencore’s money in a deal worth $10.2bn. On paper, after nine months he shows a small loss: Glencore retains a 0.5% equity stake in Rosneft, now worth about €250m. But crucially, traders expect Glencore to hold onto the most valuable benefit of the deal: an agreement to let his firm sell hundreds of millions of barrels of Russian oil to global markets over five years. "It is a very sweet deal. I wouldn’t hesitate to pay three times what Glencore paid to get those volumes," said a trader with a rival company. For Glencore’s bankers, the relief comes from unwinding the original deal, Russia’s biggest privatisation since the 1990s, under which Glencore an...
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