The price of friendship

It’s nice to have a caring shareholder. Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly, will get the $4.2bn it needs for its acquisition of a 20% stake in its own oil company Gazprom Neft from Italian oil and gas group Eni. A group of Russian banks, mostly state-owned, like Gazprom itself, will lend it money for a deal it would have had some trouble financing on its own. Stumbling commodity prices, a $48bn debt load, and a share that has lost three quarters of its value in the last year would have made...