Novomet says Halliburton dropped acquisition plans over sanctions

MOSCOW, Jan 26 (PRIME) – A planned U.S. $1 billion purchase by Halliburton of 100% in Russia’s Perm-based oilfield service equipment producer Novomet has been cancelled because of the Western sanctions, a Novomet representative told PRIME on Friday.

“The share purchase has been cancelled. One of the main reasons for that were the sanctions. The deadline for the deal expired last year,” Novomet’s representative said.

Russian state nanotechnology company Rusnano planned to sell its 30.76% stake in Novomet in July 2016, but it repeatedly delayed the auction and increased the stake’s minimum price to 9.9 billion rubles from 7.5 billion rubles. In January 2017, the Federal Antimonopoly Service received Halliburton’s request to buy 100% in Novomet and redirected it to the government’s commission for foreign investments.

Kommersant business daily reported that negotiations with Halliburton started in 2016, when the U.S. company wanted to raise its share on the Russian drilling market. It later abandoned the plans mainly because of a negative reaction of the Russian government to the deal and new U.S. sanctions, sources told Kommersant.

The paper said that Director Igor Artemyev said in June 2017 that the government’s commission for foreign investment control planned to consider the Halliburton–Novomet deal in late June–early July 2017, but it has not yet discussed the deal.

In September 2017, Rusnano CEO Anatoly Chubais said that the U.S. company had not yet filed the request to the government’s commission, and that Rusnano still planned to sell its stake in Novomet to Halliburton or any other company.

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