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TNK-BP’s Russian shareholders want board meeting to consider action against BP

TNK-BP oil company are going to call an early meeting of the company’s board of directors for considering the question of starting legal proceedings against the British BP

MOSCOW, October 25 (Itar-Tass) —— The Russian shareholders of the TNK-BP oil company are going to call an early meeting of the company’s board of directors for considering the question of starting legal proceedings against the British shareholder BP and its representatives, a source familiar with the state of affairs in the company told Itar-Tass.

According to information available to Itar-Tass, the board meeting is to be called at the initiative of the management.

The board of directors of the daughter company TNK-BP Holding gave the cold shoulder to the idea minority shareholders might join the suit to demand a compensation for profits missed as a result of the BP’s Arctic shelf transaction with Rosneft.

The TNK-BP Holding’s board of directors is to meet in session in November. Earlier, one of the independent directors said that there was no intention of calling a meeting by the end of November.

The TNK-BP has refrained from comment. However, the BP has quoted experts as saying that the minority shareholders’ lawsuits were groundless, because there had been no profits missed.

This is not the first attempt by Russia’s TNK-BP shareholders to take the differences between shareholders regarding the company’s management strategy and the rights of shareholders to a courtroom. The Stockholm court of arbitration earlier agreed that the BP had violated the shareholder agreement with its intention to conclude an Arctic transaction with Rosneft.

Nevertheless one of Russia’s TNK-BP shareholders, Viktor Vekselberg, denies the existence of a conflict between shareholders.

“Everything inside the TNK-BP is fine, and inside the BP it is fine, too,” he told the media.