Russia's largest oil company Rosneft is all set to buy a 50 percent stake in TNK-BP from BP for a total consideration of about 55 billion. The state-owned oil major's board has approved the deal whereby Rosneft will give out $17.1 billion in cash and 12.84 percent of its shares. To finance the deal, Rosneft is gearing up for a bond sale, encouraged by the rising investor appetite for emerging market debt.

J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Citigroup and VTB Capital are joint coordinators and bookrunners on the potential deal, whereas Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley are joint lead managers and joint bookrunners. According to reports, the acquisition will be funded by a combination of loans from international banks, and bonds.

Pertinent to note that Rosneft had earlier agreed to acquire the whole of TNK-BP, buying one half from BP for $26.8 billion in cash and shares and the other half from AAR group of Soviet-born billionaires for $28 billion in cash.

The deal comes through at a time when the Russian government is planning to reduce its own stake in the company. Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich has said in an interview with a media organization that the government has plans to reduce the state's stake in Rosneft to less than 50 percent by 2018. "We fully confirm the reduction of the state's stake to less than controlling or the complete sale of the state stake should take place by 2018," he said.

Dvorkovich said he expected the buyout to boost Rosneft's budgetary revenues in the coming years and added that the annual payments to meet the debt obligations will not affect the flow of dividends.