Artemis' Frost: BP must shrink to revive growth prospects

Adrian Frost, manager of the £3.9bn Artemis Income fund, said BP and other major companies should make further asset sales in order to improve their growth prospects.

Frost said BP "had not done anything for a long time" even prior to the Gulf oil spill last summer, and pointed to the success of its disposals following the disaster. "The premium achieved on some of those sales were 30%-40% over analyst valuations. I look at BP's discount to net asset value, at around 40%, and ask whether the share price will get close to NAV again. I would say the answer is no". Frost and Artemis Global Equity Income fund manager Jacob de Tusch Lec noted such practices were already evident in other oil majors such as ConocoPhillips, which announced plans to break u...