BP agreed on Friday to form a joint venture with Russia’s largest oil producer, state-controlled Rosneft, to develop three massive offshore exploration blocks Rosneft owns in northern Russia. As part of the deal, which comes four months after BP plugged a blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico that caused the United States’ worst ever oil spill, BP will swap a 5 percent stake in itself for a 9.5 percent stake in Rosneft.
BP is mostly British AND American – 40% shareholders are British and 39% are US. Thus 21% are owned by shareholders in a number of other countries. Hence, it is, arguably, not a British or American company in the true sense but a multinational one.