Rosneft contested the court ruling to exact 100 billion roubles from BP

Last July, Andrey Prokhorov, a minority shareholder of TNK-BP Holding, won the greatest victory in the history of corporate disputes: the Tiumen Court of Arbitration partly upheld his claim and ruled to exact 100,4 billion roubles from BP structures to the benefit of TNK-BP Holding. BP contested the ruling: BP structures as well as three members of the Board of TNK-BP Int. appealed against the award by the Court of Arbitration.

On the same day, according to the database kad.arbitr.ru, Rosneft also contested the award by the Tiumen Court of Arbitration (the state holding is also involved in the case as a third party without own claims).

The case proceedings between BP and A.Prokhorov have been going on for over a year: since August of 2011. The minority shareholder has been trying to prove that the British company did not inform TNK-BP of the future alliance with Rosneft (joint operations on the Arctic shelf and exchange of stock: 9,53% of Rosneft for 5% of BP). The minority shareholder is convinced that because of this TNK-BP was unable to join the strategic alliance and incurred damages.

He corrected the amount of claim thrice: starting from 87 billion roubles it went all the way to 409 billion, and then dropped to 288 billion. The Court only partly agreed with this evaluation and ruled to uphold the demand to exact 37,8 billion roubles of lost profits from the potential exchange of stock (the difference between the value of 9,53% of Rosneft on the stock exchanges before and after the announcement of the agreement with BP). Another 62,6 billion roubles are lost profits from the participation in the shelf operations. A.Prokhorov estimated it at 250,4 billion roubles, but the judge divided that amount by 4, since Rosneft invited 4 companies to operate the shelf (TNK-BP, Lukoil, Surgutneftegaz and Bashneft).

Rosneft’s attorney is silent on why the company has contested the award. Arthur Rokhlin, Partner of the Law Firm "YUST", surmises that the state holding is protecting itself from possible claims: the award by the Tiumen Court of Arbitration may become a precedent, which would allow minority shareholders of other companies to lay similar claims to Rosneft and other ventures. Pletnev explains that the competition of claims and jurisdictions is evident: if the higher instances uphold the award by the Tiumen Court of Arbitration, the claims of this category of cases may be transferred from foreign courts to Russia.

Andrey Polischuk, analyst of Raiffeisenbank, doubts that the state company is planning that far ahead: in all probability, by filing an appeal, Rosneft attempts to give support to BP, with which it negotiates the purchase of its share of TNK-BP.

Attorneys of BP and TNK-BP refused comments, A.Prokhorov and his advocates were unavailable.

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