David Lasfargue, the head of the Gide Loyrette Nouel law firm office in Moscow, was elected as the independent director on the nine-person board, TNK-BP Holding said in a statement.
BP chief executive Tony Hayward and the billionaire partners in TNK-BP collectively known as AAR -- Mikhail Fridman, German Khan, Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik -- agreed in September to change management to end an eight-month dispute over the oil venture's management and strategy. The owners also approved changes to the company's charter, the statement said.
"The presence of an independent director will bring new perspectives to board discussions and help avoid possible board deadlock in case of differences," TNK-BP Holding said.
Interim CEO Tim Summers said in the statement that "the management of the company now looks forward to proceeding under the new governance model" as it moves to "the next phase of the company's evolution."
TNK-BP Holding is a unit of TNK-BP Ltd., which is equally owned by BP, Europe's second-largest oil company, and AAR. Minority shareholders hold about 5 percent of TNK-BP Holding. The new board will consist of the independent director and four members each from BP and AAR, which stands for Alfa Access Renova.
Anatoly Akimenko, vice president at Access Industries Holdings, Pavel Nazaryan, executive vice president at Alfa Finance Holdings, Aleksei Savchenko, director of Alfa Group's CTF Consultancy, and Igor Cheremkin, director at Renova Management, were elected to the board as AAR's representatives, according to TNK-BP's web site.
Richard Sloan, Grant Warnsby, Paul Kitson and Peter Charow, officials from BP Exploration Services, were also elected.
Under the breakthrough deal, CEO Robert Dudley stepped down earlier this month. All members of the previous 10-person board also resigned. The British and Russians also agreed to nominate a new, independent chief executive and to expand the board to add an independent director.
TNK-BP executives have been discussing nominees for CEO for the past two weeks, but it is the newly elected board that will make the decision. Marina Dracheva, a TNK-BP spokeswoman, was unable to say when the board was expected to make the choice.
(Bloomberg, AP)
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