EDC board chairman says Schlumberger’s bid for firm not endless

MOSCOW, Nov 28 (PRIME) – U.S. Schlumberger’s acquisition of a stake in Eurasia Drilling Company (EDC) may be cancelled if the Russian government fails to approve it until the end of the year, Chairman of EDC’s Board of Directors Alexander Shokhin told reporters on Wednesday.

“I think that if (the deal) fails to happen until the end of the year, there are risks it will never happen,” he said.

“Schlumberger’s board of directors decides to extend the mandate for three months each quarter and each time this is a subject for discussion … Of course, the board of directors wants to hear from the management about the status of the deal, why it is not closed … And the board od directors votes on the issue. It is hard to say what mood can appear there after a new package of sanctions is introduced, for instance. We cannot say that the Schlumberger bid is endless.”

In July 2017, EDC’s shareholders approved the sale of a 51% stake in the company to Schlumberger. In November, the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s Deputy Director Andrei Tsyganov said that the service and Schlumberger were working on a mechanism to protect the company’s investment in EDC and Russian economic interests in case of new Western sanctions.

In April 2018, Russian government’s commission for foreign investment control preliminarily approved Schlumberger’s bid to acquire between 25% plus one share and 49% in EDC.

End