Silk Road Fund to Acquire Stake in SIBUR

In one of the largest Chinese investments ever made in a Russian business, and the largest agreed to in 2016, Cleary Gottlieb represented SIBUR in the sale of a 10 percent shareholding in the company to Silk Road Fund, the Chinese state-owned investment fund.

An official signing ceremony was held in Beijing on December 14, 2016, attended by Leonid Mikhelson, Chairman of SIBUR’s Board of Directors; Dmitry Konov, Chairman of SIBUR’s Management Board; and Wang Yanzhi, President of the Silk Road Fund. The transaction is expected to complete in January 2017, subject to Russian regulatory approvals.

This deal marked a follow-up to the December 2015 transaction in which China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec), a leading global petrochemical corporation, acquired a 10 percent shareholding in SIBUR, for which Cleary also represented SIBUR. The transaction is considered an important step in the development of strategic cooperation between Russia and China, consistent with both the Russian Far East development strategy and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.

SIBUR is Russia’s leading vertically integrated gas processing and petrochemicals company. The Silk Road Fund, as a medium- to long-term development and investment fund, makes outbound investment in infrastructure, energy, industrialization and financial cooperation projects.