Streetwise Professor

Today Reuters ran a long article summarizing all of the holes in the official Russian story about the sale of the Rosneft stake. Nice of them to catch up: there is nothing in the article that wasn’t discussed here, or in RBC reports, from six weeks to two weeks ago.

The main question is who is covering the €2.2 billion hole. My leading candidates: (1) a Russian state bank (likely VTB) providing debt financing, or (2) Rosneft buying its own equity from Rosneftgaz (perhaps using funding from a Russian state bank directly, or indirectly via proceeds from its recent bond sale). One factor in favor of (2) is the web of shell companies involved in the deal: these could be used to conceal the faux nature of the “privatization” and the supposed transfer of foreign money to the budget in an amount equal to the announced purchase price. The money could be used to launder Russian money, making it look like it was coming from a foreign source.

Recall that when it was doubted Rosneft would find a foreign buyer, the fallback plan was to have the firm purchase its shares from Rosneftgaz, and then sell them to a foreign buyer later. Option (2) would be a variant on that.

Regardless, even if the details are not known, it is abundantly clear that the privatization was not the clean, blockbuster deal originally announced. It is a stitched up job intended to obscure the failure to make a straight, uncomplicated sale to foreign buyers.

Interestingly, Rosneft has allegedly paid $40 million in legal fees. (H/T @leenur.) In 2017. That’s about $2 million/day, and if the deal was done in 2016, that’s when the legal expenses would be expected to be incurred. This is consistent with this being very much a work in progress. Or maybe, a work in regress.

But the Kabuki play must go on! Sechin is inviting Putin to meet with Glencore, QIA, and Intesa:

The chief executive of Russia’s biggest oil firm Rosneft on Monday asked President Vladimir Putin to receive the company’s partners Glencore, Intesa and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the Kremlin said.

Trading house Glencore and the QIA recently became Rosneft shareholders in a multi-billion-dollar deal partly funded by Italian bank Intesa.

Rosneft boss Igor Sechin said at a meeting with Putin on Monday that Rosneft was planning new projects with the three partners and they wanted to tell Putin about the prospects for those projects, the Kremlin said in a statement on its website.

This is clearly intended to lend Putin’s authority to the deal (as he already did in his end of year Q&A). Bringing in Putin and the alleged principals for a Sovok PR gimmick is pathetic, and amusing–and amusing because it’s so pathetic!

Any such act will not end the questions. It will just bring attention to the deal, and any attention will only bring the questions to the fore.

Not that we can expect to get any answers from the Russians, or from QIA. But why the UK authorities and the LSE seem so complacent about the participation of a UK/LSE-listed company in such a dodgy deal, with such little disclosure, is beyond me. Glencore may argue that it has disclosed the basics of its involvement, but without knowing about the structure of the entire deal it is evaluate the accuracy of those disclosures, in particular relating to what Glencore’s real economic exposure is. The relevant parties in the UK should be pressing hard for much greater disclosure from Glencore.