Английский язык. Любинская Н.А - 12 стр.

                                        12
                                      UNIT 4

                 RUSSIAN OIL GIANT DISCLOSES ITS PLAN

Lead-in

I.

1. What do you know about Russian oil company TNK-BP?
2. What do you think about the future of this company?

Reading

II. Read the text, for questions 1-4, choose the best answer A, B, C or D.

                                       TEXT

       TNK-BP plans to combine units in two stages
       MOSCOW-Russian oil company TNK-BP showed stockholders its long-
awaited plan to begin melding its more than 15 subsidiaries and 600 legal entities
into one company.
       The plan set TNK-BP’s value at no less than $18.5 billion.
       Shareholders in TNK-BP, the Russian joint venture with British energy giant
BP, have been anxiously awaiting details of the restructuring. They will have a choice
of swapping their shares for new stock in the umbrella company, or being bought
out.
       “We’re offering shareholders a fair deal, something they don’t get very often
in Russia,” said TNK-BP Chief Financial Officer Kent Potter.
       Plenty to combine
       TNK-BP’s structure – a collection of 17 subsidiaries and about 600 legal enti-
ties like trading companies – was a legacy of Russia’s 1900s privatizations. The
company’s founders were Russian billionaires Mikhail Fridman and Viktor Veksel-
berg, and the Russian émigré Len Blavatnik. They bought up oil operations to create
the country’s third-largest producer after Lukoil and Yukos.
       In 2003, BP bought half of TNK in a deal blessed by British Prime Minister
Tony Blair and Russian President Vladimir Putin. And amid increasing Kremlin scru-
tiny of the energy sector and massive tax claims against Russia’s troubled oil com-
pany Yukos, TNK-BP has also legally incorporated in Russia, in the region of
Tyumen, near the Kazakh border.
       A previous sore point
       TNK-BP was registered in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, a sore point
for Russia’s government, which wants more transparency in collecting taxes from
oil and gas companies.
       TNK-BP expects production to grow 7 percent this year, Robert Dudley, its
chief executive, said at the news conference.