Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft bought a row of valuable assets on July 02 formerly owned by shattered oil major Yukos, Rosneft said in a statement. Rosneft bought a group of trading companies and related assets, including Yukos' former headquarters in central Moscow, from a shadowy company called Prana that won the assets at a Yukos bankruptcy auction in May.
Prana beat out Rosneft at the auction with a winning bid of 3.9 billion dollars (2.9 billion euros), setting off a storm of speculation about who was behind the previously unknown company.
Rosneft spokesman Nikolai Manvelov would not disclose the price of the sale, but said: "Rosneft got all the Prana assets it was interested in." Once Russia's largest private company, Yukos was crushed by a massive series of back-tax claims and fraud inquiries starting in 2003 that critics charged were politically motivated. Russian state to get majority stake
Gazprom plans to spend 500 million dollars (369 million euros) buying its own shares to correct a drop in its share price and give the state a majority stake in the company, Russian media reported on July 02.
"This programme will help shareholders as it will help support prices amid a drop in the market," Andrei Kruglov, deputy CEO of Gazprom, one of the world's largest companies, was quoted by the Kommersant newspaper as saying.
The purchase of shares in the gas giant is planned for 2008 and would help create a stock options programme for the company's management, Kruglov said. Kommersant quoted experts and a company executive as saying the purchase of the shares would also nudge up the state's share in Gazprom to just over 50 percent, from the current 49.78 percent.
Gazprom controls around a quarter of the world's gas reserves and has a monopoly on gas exports from Russia. The company is also expanding into energy retail operations in Europe.
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