Mikhail Fridman, the baby-faced Russian tycoon, is on the warpath. Inside his loft-like office in the Moscow headquarters of Alfa Bank, Mr Fridman is planning to take on BP, the UK energy group, over the TNK-BP joint venture, in which he and three other Russian shareholders own 50 per cent.

“They thought we would be sleeping partners ... They consider us to be no more than Russian oligarchs who will sell out,” he says as papers lay strewn across his boardroom table tabling data which he says shows TNK-BP’s poor performance under BP-led management compared to its peers.