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Beijing: A Chinese investment fund has accumulated a stake of just under one per cent in British oil company BP, the company confirmed yesterday.
BP spokesman David Nicholas said that BP was aware of the stake, which had been built up over a few months.
"We are a publicly traded company and we welcome all shareholders," Nicholas said.
British Treasury chief Alistair Darling, who is attending the inaugural China-UK Economic and Financial Dialogue in Beijing, said the government welcomed foreign investment and did not interfere in commercial decisions.
BP declined to name the investor, but The Daily Telegraph reported that it was the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), the same Chinese state fund that recently reportedly built up a similar size stake in Total.
It said SAFE's stake in Total of 1.6 per cent was worth about $2.8 billion.
SAFE is an arm of the central bank that manages China's $1.68 trillion in currency reserves.
A spokesman for BP, Britain's largest company, told the newspaper that it was aware of the Chinese stake, which is worth about $2 billion, and that it welcomed all shareholders.
SAFE talked about diversifying its investments long before the creation of CIC, and He Fan, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said it was a good thing for China to have two sovereign funds.
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