(Reuters) -Commodities trader Gunvor Group is prepared to satisfy any concerns about continued Russian influence over assets it is buying from Russia’s Lukoil, CEO Torbjorn Tornqvist has told Bloomberg News.
Last week, Lukoil said it had accepted an offer from Gunvor to buy its foreign assets, which it is selling after U.S. sanctions were imposed on Russia’s second-largest oil company.
Swiss-headquartered Gunvor, which has longstanding ties to Russia’s energy industry, has begun talks with regulators over the planned purchase, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.
Tornqvist ruled out a scenario where any of the assets would be sold back should sanctions on Lukoil be removed.
He said the deal would mark a “clean break” from Russian control, but added that some of the assets could be sold on.
U.S. sanctions imposed last month on Russia’s largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, marked Washington’s toughest measures against Russian business since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022.
(Reporting by Anushree Mukherjee in Bengaluru; editing by Jason Neely)
