Ex-BP CEO To Head Iraq Oil Venturehttps://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/09/07/tony-haywards-revenge-former-bp-ceo-to-head-iraqi-oil-company/
Like the phoenix, which is reborn from its ashes, Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP, will once again lead an oil company. Vallares Plc, an investment vehicle co-founded by Hayward and Nat Rothschild, confirmed it was buying Genel Energy, a Turkish oil and gas company operating in Iraq, through a reverse merger for $2.1 billion on Wednesday.
The acquisition will be made through a reverse merger by which the London-based Vallares will issue $2.1 billion in stock at £10 a share, which will then be used to acquire Genel. The new company will be owned in equal parts by shareholders of both Genel and Vallares, Trade the Newsreports.
Hayward will be once again at the helm of an oil and gas company after the disastrous accident in the Gulf of Mexico in the summer of 2010, when the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 and producing one of the worst natural disasters ever in the region. Hayward, who was replaced by BP’s current CEO Bob Dudley, was blamed by many for not doing enough on time to ameliorate the problems.
It’s payback time for Hayward now, as Forbes’Chris Helman pointed out. He will become CEO of the new company, while Rodney Chase, former BP deputy CEO, will act as chairman, leaving Rothschild as nonexecutive director. Genel’s current CEO, Mehmet Sepil, will become president of the new company. Back in February, Sepil was fined more than $1 million by British regulators for “market abuse” in relation to investments in Heritage Oil, DealBook reports. (Read Tony Hayward Teams With Nat Rothschild For Post-BP Comeback).
Genel is an oil and natural gas producer in the semi autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan. For $2.1 billion, Hayward and Rothschild will be getting two world-scale producing oil fields, a major gas condensate discovery, and significant exploration acreage, according to Trade the News. The transaction is still pending approval of the Kurdish Regional Government, expected to come later in September. (Read more about Genel, Iraq, and its dealings with billionaire Jean-Claude Gandur in Trouble Is My Business).
Vallares recently raised about $2 billion in a stock listing in London and was looking for strategic acquisitions to begin to grow its empire. Rumors circled that the firm was interested in Russian oil firms Bashneft ($11 billion market cap) and Russneft (about $2 billion market cap), partly owned by Russian billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov through his holding company, AFK Sistema.