BP PLC chief executive Tony Hayward, who arrived in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, may seek support from Middle East sovereign funds after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico eroded its share price by half, UBS AG said.
“The option for chasing strategic investors in the Middle East is a sound one,” Saud Masud, the Dubai-based head of Middle East research at UBS, said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Tuesday.
“They are generally passive investors, so the noise factor from a shareholder perspective is pretty low. They have significant capital; then they also invest for the long-term,” Masud said.
Hayward came to Abu Dhabi on a visit and would stay for a couple of days, he told Bloomberg News in the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) capital. He has been touring countries where BP has exploration and production operations. He was in Russia last week and in Azerbaijan on Tuesday before arriving in Abu Dhabi.
BP produces oil in the sheikhdom, where it is a partner with state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, known as ADNOC, in a venture that dates back to the first oil concession granted in the 1930s in what is now the UAE.
Sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East are reportedly interested in buying BP stock after its price dropped by about one half since the start of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the worst in US history. Hayward last month pledged to set aside US$20 billion to compensate the spill’s victims and finance the cleanup. To pay for it, the company canceled three-quarters of its dividends and planned to sell assets across the globe.
Sovereign funds traditionally “have invested in the European and Western markets in large cap names, and when you can pick up BP at 50 percent cheaper than its recent highs, then it makes a lot of sense for both parties,” Masud said.
Spokesmen for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the world’s biggest sovereign funds, and the International Petroleum Investment Co declined to comment on whether Hayward was scheduled to meet officials there. A spokesman for the Qatar Investment Authority also did not comment.
A Saudi business team, including energy industry investors, is seeking to acquire between 10 and 15 percent of BP’s shares and will hold talks with the company, Al Eqtisadiah reported yesterday, without citing its source.
BP is a “good buy” after the drop in the share price, Libya’s top oil official Shokri Ghanem said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Tuesday. He’s advising Libya’s sovereign wealth fund to take a stake in BP.
The Kuwait Investment Office is in talks with BP about increasing its holding in the company, the Guardian newspaper said on its Web site on Sunday.
BP has no plans to sell shares to raise funds, spokeswoman Sheila Williams said.
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