The bosses of the world's biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, and Russia's freshly merged Yukos-Sibneft appeared together on Friday, stoking speculation they were already discussing a multi-billion dollar investment.
Yukos and Sibneft sealed a US$45 billion merger on Friday to create Russia's biggest oil firm and open the way to foreign capital.
Although talk swirled that a deal with Exxon was coming, Yukos denied reports it was set to sell up to 50 percent of the new Russian giant to the US firm.
"We are not having any talks today ... but when there is a deal we will make you happy by telling," Yukos chief executive officer Mikhail Khodorkovsky said to reporters at an economic forum in Moscow, where he shared a conference platform with Exxon CEO Lee Raymond.
Raymond avoided all talk of a deal with Yukos. But he said Russia had to accept that foreign companies should be entirely free to invest in the country if it wanted to be a fully fledged player in a global economy.
"If you expect to have a transparent economic system and expect to participate in world markets ... you do not restrict the flow of capital and you do not restrict arbitrarily people who can participate in the flow of capital," he said.
Yukos received an abrupt reminder on Friday that it is still the target of a judicial investigation when police searched an orphanage funded by the oil company as well as a business centre owned by Menatep, the management company that holds a controlling stake in Yukos.
The company's offices have been searched repeatedly since the arrest in July of Platon Lebedev, a Khodorkovsky associate who owns a big stake in Yukos, on embezzlement charges which have been reported as being aimed at Khodorkovsky himself.
A London source familiar with the Yukos-Sibneft merger, effectively a US$15 billion takeover of smaller Sibneft, said: "ExxonMobil are in the driving seat if they want to be ... It's down to whether they have the guts and the brains."
The Financial Times said on Friday that ExxonMobil was in talks with Yukos and considering buying a 40 percent stake, reviving speculation that has been running for weeks. A trader in Moscow said the market believed a deal was on the cards.
By 3:56pm shares in Yukos had fallen 2.7 percent to US$15.2, reversing earlier gains amid jitters about the searches. Sibneft also changed direction to be down 3.13 percent to US$3.1.
Yukos-Sibneft will become a group with oil and gas output on a scale similar to that of French giant and world number four firm Total, and more than that produced by Kuwait.
It is expected to have a market value of about US$45 billion, making it by far the largest listed group in Russia and ranking it number seven in the league of the world's top oil firms by market value.
Under terms agreed this year, Yukos' core shareholders will pay Sibneft's core shareholders, who hold the other 92 percent of the firm, US$3 billion plus 26 percent and one share in the new group.
Sibneft's core shareholders are led by Roman Abramovich, the high-profile and free-spending businessman who bought English premiership soccer club Chelsea earlier this year and who also sold out of his aluminium venture Russian Aluminium on Friday.
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