By Dmitry Zhdannikov, Anna Hirtenstein and David Gauthier-Villars
LONDON, Dec 8 (Reuters) – U.S. investment bank Xtellus Partners has proposed to the U.S. Treasury that proceeds from the sale of Lukoil’s foreign assets be used to repay American investors who lost money when Russia’s war in Ukraine froze their Lukoil stock holdings, sources said.
U.S. asset managers including BlackRock, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs lost billions of dollars when they had to first freeze and then write off their stock holdings in Russian firms including Lukoil, after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Xtellus has told the U.S. Treasury it wanted to organise a swap of Lukoil securities held by U.S. investors in a cashless sale back to Lukoil in exchange for the Russian company’s global assets, four sources familiar with the plan told Reuters.
The proposal has not been previously reported.
The U.S. Treasury and Lukoil declined to comment.
The bank is advising American billionaire Todd Boehly and United Arab Emirates’ investor group Allied Investment Partners, who have partnered on this proposed deal.
A representative for Boehly declined to comment. Allied Investment Partners did not respond to a request for comment.
MANY KEEN ON LUKOIL’S $22 BILLION OF GLOBAL ASSETS
Lukoil’s estimated $22 billion of international assets have attracted a long list of interested parties, from U.S. private equity giant Carlyle to Chevron.
The U.S. sanctioned Russia’s two largest energy companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in October in an attempt to push the Kremlin towards a peace deal with Ukraine.
Lukoil has been the hardest hit, with overseas operations disrupted from Iraq to Finland.
The company has until December 13 to sell these assets, but has asked for an extension of this deadline so it has more time to work on deals, two other sources said.
Paying for the assets in shares could mean a faster transaction, according to sources, as Western sanctions on Lukoil forbid cash transfers to the company.
Western investors held over a quarter of Lukoil stock before the war began. The firm is currently worth around $50 billion.
LUKOIL ASSETS LIKELY TO BE SOLD TO ENERGY FIRMS
If the proposal is successful, Boehly and Allied Investment Partners would seek to sell Lukoil’s overseas assets, likely to energy companies. Buyers of assets would have first to agree their idea with Lukoil before clearing the transaction with the Treasury, sources have said.
Xtellus emerged in 2018 after a management buyout of Russia’s second largest bank VTB Capital’s U.S. operations.
Lukoil was previously part of key stock indices which are commonly used as benchmarks and tracked by major investors and exchange-traded funds. Index providers including FTSE Russell and MSCI removed Russian stocks from its benchmarks in March 2022, following the invasion of Ukraine.
(Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Anna Hirtenstein in London and David Gauthier-Villars in Istanbul; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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