The head and co-owner of Russia’s largest private oil company Lukoil Vagit Alekperov increased his ownership of the company by buying an 80.439-million-roubles stake in the company, according to a statement from Lukoil.

Mr. Vagit Alekperov bought 10,000 ordinary shares on February 4, 2013 and 30,000 shares on February 6, 2013. The price tag for the purchases was 20.115 million roubles and 60.324 million roubles, respectively. As a result of the transactions, the share of Lukoil that Vagit Alekperov directly owned as of February 6, 2013 increased from 2.18 percent to 2.184 percent. Mr. Alekperov’s previous transactions involving the shares of Lukoil were in January. In the course of those transactions, Lukoil’s CEO bought out company shares worth 360.697 million roubles, increasing his stake in the company to 2.18 percent from 2.16 percent. Interviewed by the Echo of Moscow radio station on February 5, Alekperov said that he believed the company to be grossly undervalued by at least two times. He stressed that the owners of Lukoil’s shares have no plans to sell them. Lukoil managers have been actively buying company shares as of the end of January 2012.

In mid-January 2013, Alekperov bought 50,000 ordinary shares at 100.8 million roubles. The stake in Lukoil that Mr. Alekperov directly owned rose to 2.16 percent from 2.15 percent. Last December, Mr. Alekperov bought 2.1 million common shares for USD136.4 million, increasing his direct ownership of the company to 2.15 percent from 1.9 percent. At the same time, the vice president and co-owner of Lukoil Leonid Fedun bought 1.9 million shares for USD123.793 million, bringing his direct stake to 1.39 percent from 1.17 percent. These latter acquisitions became the largest transactions involving the shares of Lukoil by company managers last year. As a result of the December transactions, Mr. Alekperov’s direct and beneficial ownership in the company added up to 20.87 percent in the capital structure Lukoil. Mr. Fedun’s direct and beneficial ownership stood at 9.5 percent. The shares were purchased from non-Lukoil counterparties.

Mr. Alekperov has repeatedly said that he considers Lukoil as the best investment of his money. He is buying company shares on the market, sometimes even with the use of the very dividends received from the company itself. In January 2012, the vice president and co-owner of Lukoil Leonid Fedun announced that the company has decided that its management would purchase the shares of the company that were on the market with the use of their disposable assets. He said that the company planned to prepare a new stock options plan by the end of 2012, in line with which the management would also be entitled to receive shares from the company directly. To achieve desired results, the company planned to use its treasury stock. The treasury stock on the company’s balance sheet at the end of April constituted an 11-percent stake in the company. In June, Lukoil launched a program to buy back USD2.5 billion worth of its stock, which the company plans to purchase by mid-2015. Lukoil has already repurchased its shares from the market in the amount of about USD5 billion. In particular, Lukoil repurchased the shares sold by the U.S. company ConocoPhillips, which previously owned 20 percent of Lukoil. Lukoil’s stock has a primary listing in Russia. In addition, Lukoil’s stock and ADRs have a standard listing on the London Stock Exchange. The company’s ADR are also traded on the U.S. OTC market. Lukoil’s authorized capital stands at 21.26 million roubles, divided into ordinary shares with par value of 0.025 roubles.