ONGC Videsh (OVL) has paid $2.1 billion for taking over UK-listed Imperial Energy and will invest another $500-600 million in the company's Russian fields to raise production over the next 2-3 years.
OVL, the overseas arm of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), paid $1.9 billion to equity shareholders of Imperial and the remaining to the company's bond holders. "The entire money has been deposited with the registrar of the company," an official said.
With the acquisition of Imperial, OVL's overseas assets would rise to 40 in 17 countries. The company had begun with one asset in Vietnam seven years ago.
Though only 96.8 per cent of the shareholders had accepted OVL's 12.50 pounds a share offer, OVL would "squeeze out" the remaining untendered shares by posting them cheques of the offer amount and telling the shareholders that their untendered shares were no longer valid. Imperial would be delisted from London Stock Exchange after the acquisition, he said.
Imperial, the Leeds-based firm that has oil producing blocks in Tomsk region of western Siberia in Russia and Kastanai in north-central Kazakhstan, would be the biggest overseas ever acquisition by OVL.
The official said OVL will invest another $500-600 million over the next 2-3 years to raise output from the fields to 80,000 barrels per day by 2012. Separately, ONGC Chairman and Managing Director R S Sharma said the company had given a cash loan of about Rs 4,000 crore to OVL for the acquisition at 5.96 per cent interest rate. OVL raised another Rs 5,200 crore through a commercial paper at 8.15 per cent coupon rate.
