Todd Boehly leads swap plan to buy Lukoil overseas assets
Todd Boehly is buying foreign assets of Lukoil in a $22 billion deal.
The short version
- A bank bought frozen Lukoil securities from Western funds to swap for the assets.
- The cashless deal puts shares into an escrow account instead of paying cash to Moscow.
A bank acting for the group has purchased billions of dollars of frozen Lukoil securities from Western investment funds to trade for the company's foreign holdings in a deal expected within weeks. If completed, the transaction wraps up a sales process lasting over a year that initially valued the portfolio at $22 billion.
Lukoil's foreign footprint covers oilfields, refineries and petrol stations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, though values have dropped as some operations halted. The plan relies on a cashless swap where frozen Lukoil shares held by Western investors like Capital Group are exchanged for the foreign assets.
The Boehly group advanced the bid by promising to park shares in an escrow account rather than sending cash directly to Moscow, overcoming earlier U.S. Treasury rejections. The bank bought the securities from about 10 U.S. and British investment funds at 30 cents on the dollar, reflecting steep discounts from their sanctioned status.
Carlyle, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and more than a dozen other companies previously bid for the assets before dropping out.
Photo: NVO, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
