Streetwise Professor

Glencore has just announced that the deal to sell Rosneft shares to CEFC has been terminated.  Furthermore, the QIA-Glencore consortium is being wound up, with virtually all of the shares going to QIA:

The members of the Consortium have agreed to dissolve the Consortium originally put in place in December 2016 for the purposes of acquiring a 19.5% stake in Rosneft and will take direct ownership of the underlying Rosneft shares.  In connection with that, the Consortium has today entered into an agreement to transfer a 14.16% stake in Rosneft to a wholly owned subsidiary of QIA (the “Transaction”) the consideration for which will to be used for the settlement of the Consortium’s liabilities. This agreement will become effective on 7 May 2018.

On completion of the Transaction, the Consortium will be wound up and the margin guarantees provided by Glencore will be terminated.  At that point, Glencore will retain an equity stake in Rosneft shares commensurate with its original equity investment announced in January 2017, which amounts to 0.57%, and QIA will hold an equity stake of 18.93%.

Meaning that in reality, as I noted at the outset of the deal, Glencore was basically a straw buyer–a beard–to provide the appearance of western corporate participation in the deal.

The price is also interesting:

The consideration for the Transaction attributable to Glencore’s interest in the Consortium (being 50% of the consideration for the Transaction) is approximately EUR 3.7 billion.

Well, the original December 2016 price was EUR 10.2 billion, meaning that this price is at a 25 percent discount from the original deal.

Who ate this difference?  Glencore?  I doubt it, but if it did, it would raise huge questions about its disclosures (or lack thereof) at the time of the original deal.  Regardless, this is yet another example of Glencore playing with fire.  What comes after trifecta?

I further note that whereas it was rumored that a Chinese state company would step into the shoes of CEFC, this hasn’t happened.  Yet, anyways.

Some state champion, that Rosneft, eh?

Update.  Some arithmetic.  The sums disclosed by today’s announcement basically indicate that Qatar assumed all but Glencore’s sliver at an amount equal to the original amount of the deal agreed to in December, 2016–including the mystery €2.2 billion which pretty much everybody but me and Ivan Tkachaev at RBC missed.  Qatar originally put up €2.5b, Glencore €.3b, and Intesa €5.2b, which adds up to €8b, or €2.2b short of the announced €10.2b.  The difference apparently came from as yet unnamed Russian banks, this in spite of Putin’s claim that Russian banks would not provide financing for a Rosneft “privatization.”

Today Qatar agreed to pony up €7.4b.  Add to that its original €2.5b and Glencore’s €.3b, and voila!, you have . . . €10.2b.  Miraculous, no?  Everybody remains whole!

Here’s the problem though.  Rosneft has been trading pretty much flat in RUB.  On 9 December, 2016, its share price was 370.8 RUB.  Today, it is 386.75 RUB, about 4 percent higher.  However, the RUB has depreciated about 12 percent against the EUR, going from 65.9707 to 75.155RUB/EUR.  So, in EUR terms, Rosneft is worth about 8.5 percent less than in December, 2016, but Qatar is paying the same price today as was agreed to then.

Why would Qatar do this?  Yes (as Ivan T points out to me) ~€1b is pocket change for the QIA, which has a $320b portfolio.  But still, you don’t get rich by gifting ~10 percent of deals.  So is there a side deal?