EFL.
Stricken Russian oil giant Yukos was hoping that a US court would grant it bankruptcy protection, scaring off Western banks planning to finance a Russian state-directed takeover of its main asset. Yukos filed for voluntary bankruptcy on Wednesday in a US district court in Houston, Texas, and petitioned for an injunction to prevent Russian authorities from proceeding with Sunday's fire-sale of Yuganskneftegaz...Russian newspapers described the eleventh-hour US legal appeal as a "desperate attempt" to halt the auction which would not deter the Kremlin and the state-appointed gas bosses at Gapzrom from putting Yugansk under the hammer. But they said that it could frighten the multinational banks led by Germany's Deutsche Bank and which include US financial giant JP Morgan, Dutch ABN Amro and France's BNP Paribas, who are lending Gazprom 10 billion euros (13 billion dollars). |