{{British Petroleum BP, announced last week a US$8 billion share buyback program, acting swiftly to reward investors after it sold its stake in its Russian unit, TNK-BP.}}<\/p>\n
The British oil major, which completed the sale of its half of TNK-BP to Russian state oil firm Rosneft said the $8 billion return to shareholders was an amount equivalent to the value of the company’s original investment in TNK-BP in 2003.<\/p>\n
BP had said earlier that it planned to distribute to shareholders some of the $12.48 billion it netted from the sale, first announced last October.<\/p>\n
“This buy-back program should allow our shareholders to see benefits in the near-term from the value we have realized by reshaping our Russian business,” said BP chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg.<\/p>\n
The deal, worth $55 billion in total and the biggest in Russia’s corporate history, also gives BP a near 20 percent stake in Rosneft.<\/p>\n
The $4.48 billion balance remaining from the sale after the buyback will be used to reduce group debt, BP said.<\/p>\n
BP said the proposed buyback would exceed the amount required to offset the earnings-per-share dilution expected as a result of the sale of TNK-BP, and from the huge reduction to its asset base from $38 billion worth of disposals carried out to help pay for the cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010.<\/p>\n
The company is currently in court in New Orleans over the spill, which happened when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank, killing 11 men.<\/p>\n
The disaster, the worst in the United States’ offshore history, prompted BP to cut its dividend that year before it resumed payments in 2011.<\/p>\n
BP said it expects the buyback program to take 12 to 18 months to complete.<\/p>\n
{The Moscow Times}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{British Petroleum BP, announced last week a US$8 billion share buyback program, acting swiftly to reward investors after it sold its stake in its Russian unit, TNK-BP.}} The British oil major, which completed the sale of its half of TNK-BP to Russian state oil firm Rosneft said the $8 billion return to shareholders was an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-6719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6719"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6719"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}