If it achieves that aim it could remove the company from the Riga stock exchange, a move that would dealing a blow to the bourse as Ventspils Nafta is one of few major blue-chip stocks presently listed.
Vitol upped its stake from 47% to 93% of Ventspils Nafta earlier this month in a deal currently being scrutinized by Latvian regulator the Financial and Capital Markets Commission (FKTK), Bloomberg said.
“Having come this far we would look to buy the rest of the
company, then the logical next step would be to delist,” Ventspils Nafta chairman Robert Kirkup said.
As previously reported by LSM Ventspils Nafta’s shares rose steeply just before official notice of negotiations about the deal was given to the market.
Kirkup said the price blip was "part of people’s plan to make the deal look uncompetitive,” without going into details of who such "people" might be.