MOSCOW (MRC) -- The oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) hired JPMorgan Chase & Co as an advisor to sell its stake in the petrochemical company Braskem SA, reported Reuters with reference to three sources familiar with the matter.
Earlier Thursday, Petrobras executives said in a conference call with investors that they had hired advisers to sell its stake in Braskem, without giving further details.
Brazilian conglomerate Novonor, formerly known as Odebrecht, resumed the sale of its majority stake in Braskem in April, but did not still found a buyer. However, Morgan Stanley, adviser to Novonor, has received offers for certain Braskem assets. The company has factories in Brazil, Mexico and the United States.
Considering the complexity of selling units to different buyers, Petrobras decided to hire an advisor to analyze potential transactions.
Petrobras, which is also interested in selling its stake in the company, favored a sale through a share offering, but Novonor, as a controlling shareholder, prefers an acquisition because it seeks a premium for its voting shares.
As MRC informed before, Braskem is no longer pursuing a petrochemical project, which would have included an ethane cracker, in West Virginia. And the company is seeking to sell the land that would have housed the cracker. The project, announced in 2013, had been on Braskem's back burner for several years.
Ethylene and propylene are the main feedstocks for the production of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), respectively.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 953,400 tonnes in the first five months of 2021, which virtually corresponded to the same figure a year earlier. High density polyethylene (HDPE) shipments decreased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 607,8900 tonnes in January-May 2021, up by 33% year on year. Shipments of homopolymer PP and PP block copolymers increased, whereas deliveries of PP random copolymers decreased.
Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras is an integrated energy firm. Petrobras' activities include exploration, exploitation and production of oil from reservoir wells, shale and other rocks as well as refining, processing, trade and transport of oil and oil products, natural gas and other fluid hydrocarbons, in addition to other energy-related activities.
Braskem S.A. produces petrochemicals and generates electricity. The Company produces ethylene, propylene, benzene, toluene, xylenes, butadiene, butene, isoprene, dicyclopentediene, MTBE, caprolactam, ammonium sulfate, cyclohexene, polyethylene theraphtalat, polyethylene, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
MRC