Medvedev Orders to Work Out Strategy on Increasing Rosneft's Dividends

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered to elaborate a plan on increasing the amount of dividends of the Rosneft energy company.

OULU (Sputnik) — Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin informed Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that an agreement had been reached to sell the government stake in the company to a consortium of mining group Glencore and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund for 10.5 billion euros (some $11.3 billion).

"I also gave an instruction to work out a plan of increasing the amount of dividends," Medvedev told reporters, answering a question about Rosneft's privatization deal.

Rosneft’s dividend policy earlier stipulated payouts in the amount of at least 25 percent of Rosneft's net profit under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). In 2015, the total amount Rosneft used for dividend payment was 124.5 billion rubles, which constituted 35 percent of its IFRS net profit.

On June 15, Sechin said at Rosneft’s annual general shareholders’ meeting that although the company managed to carry out such dividend payments without risks for investment projects, the company generally stuck to the dividend policy of 25 percent of net profit under IFRS.