March 2005

21.03.2005
King of Petrol Stations.
Mikhail Gutseriev has become an owner of metropolitan petrol stations. Company RussNeft headed by him has acquired Moscow’s biggest independent retail network called Grand.

Mikhail Gutseriev has become an owner of metropolitan petrol stations. Company RussNeft headed by him has acquired Moscow’s biggest independent retail network called Grand. Though the exact amount of the deal is kept secret there has leaked out some information that nearly $100 million were paid for the network integrating nearly 90 petrol stations of which 59 are in Moscow and the rest in the Moscow region and in the area of Sochi.
The businessman has taken his time to look narrowly at these petrol stations. In 2000 Grand entered into a concession agreement with state-run company Slavneft of which Gutseriev was president. In September 2002 a few months before Slavneft privatization Gutseriev and his partners founded company RussNeft. A few small oil producing entities bought later on (also from some affiliates of Slavneft) have made Russneft the biggest independent oil company which produced 6.6 million tons of crude oil in 2004.
Now for the sake of completeness Gutseriev needs only an own refinery. And the only problem here is that such enterprises do not tend to be small by definition and are not independent since long.

Source: "The Company"