President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Friends, colleagues, allow me to cordially welcome you to Moscow.
I would like to congratulate you on the closure of the deal to acquire a 19.5 percent stake in our leading oil company Rosneft. I would like to thank you for your trust, for your decision. And I would like to express my confidence that your business in Russia will develop and that it will develop successfully. After the deal was closed, Rosneft’s market value increased 18 percent, so you have already made a profit.
I know that you plan to expand cooperation with the company, including in Russia, and we will honour all these agreements in good faith because they are also in the interest of all participants in this process.
Our Qatari friends will engage in hydrocarbon production on Russian territory. Glencore will have a long-term contract. I know that you are already working on a long-term contract on deliveries of our oil to international markets. In this sense, Rosneft is interested in such long-term cooperation in both these dimensions.
I hope very much that Intesa will also expand its operations on the Russian market. I believe you also have an office.
Intesa Sanpaolo SpA CEO Carlo Messina: Yes.
Vladimir Putin: Is it an office or a subsidiary that is already up and running?
Carlo Messina: It’s a bank. It’s a fully licensed bank, and we want to expand our presence, because we want to increase our presence in the country.
Vladimir Putin: As far as I know, today is exactly 10 years since Intesa teamed up with your partners. So I congratulate you on this date.
Carlo Messina: Thank you very much.
Vladimir Putin: How do you evaluate the deal and its development prospects?
Glencore international AG CEO Ivan Glasenberg: The deal is very important to us as Glencore, as you know – we’ve had a long relationship with Rosneft and we’ve been taking oil and oil products from Rosneft and trading and marketing around the world. And I think this new deal gives us further tonnages. And we’ve indeed been talking to Rosneft about how we can swap tonnages, we can deal with different countries around the world – where we have our strength and they have their strength – into India, into other parts of Asia, into China, where we can utilise our tonnages and their tonnages. So there are a lot of opportunities for us to work together around this transaction, for the benefit of both companies.
Vladimir Putin: Previously, you were involved with coal?
Ivan Glasenberg: Yeah, we’ve been dealing in Russia for many years. We started getting very active since 1991–1992. We deal a lot with the various coal companies. We export coal from Russia. We’ve been dealing with that for many years. So we deal with all of them. We deal a lot in aluminium. We have investment, as you know, with Rusal. We have an off-take agreement with Rusal, so we take a lot of aluminium. We deal in copper-zinc, so we have an active relationship in getting commodities out of Russia.
Vladimir Putin: I hope that our Qatari friends are also satisfied with the work at this stage.
Qatar Investment Authority CEO H.E. Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Thani: First of all, I would like to thank you for the meeting. I would like to convey the regards of His Highness the Emir to Mr President.
Last year, we started to invest in Russia. And after the visit of His Highness, in January, we stepped up our investment, for instance with RDIF, with VTB Bank, and St Petersburg Airport, and now with Rosneft. And we will continue working together for more relations and more investment together.
Vladimir Putin: I hope that your work with the Russian Direct Investment Fund will also expand in other areas.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Thani: We did almost over 500 million in almost a year, and last night we closed another contract that we will continue for another two billion for the coming investment together.
Vladimir Putin: Convey my very best wishes to His Highness the Emir of Qatar.
I would like once again to congratulate you on this deal. It is the world’s largest deal in the oil and gas sector last year.
Sheikh Abdullah bin Mohammed bin Saud Al Thani: Thank you.
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