Repsol likely to accept Argentina's $5bn YPF compensation offer The board of Repsol is likely to accept an offer of $5bn compensation from the Argentine government for last year's nationalisation of its YPF subsidiary at a meeting scheduled for Wednesday. Repsol's management, under pressure from the Spanish oil company's largest shareholders, has in principle agreed to settle the bitter legal battle over Argentina's seizure of its majority stake in YPF, but is demanding guarantees over how the $5bn will be paid, people close to the situation said. While the final details of a deal have not yet been decided, Argentina has indicated to Repsol and the Spanish government that it would pay the $5bn using its own government debt. As a consequence of Argentina's default at the turn of the century the country is still being pursued by a long line of international creditors, and Repsol's management is seeking legal assurances that any payment would be enforceable, people close to the talks said. Repsol, which saw its shares jump more than 4 per cent on news of a possible deal, declined to comment. The heads of Repsol's two largest investors, the Catalan bank Caixabank and Pemex, Mexico's state oil company, were present at a meeting held in Buenos Aires on Monday with Argentina's economy minister Axel Kicillof and Spain's industry minister José Manuel Soria, along with three Repsol executives. The position of Antonio Brufau, Repsol's executive chairman, is less clear. Tense relations with the company's large shareholders in recent months spilled out in public, as Pemex attacked his salary. While Mr Brufau was not present at the meeting in Buenos Aires, people close to Repsol's management said he had personally approved the envoy being sent to Argentina and welcomed an agreement. In June Repsol's board voted against an earlier $5bn compensation proposal from YPF which involved the payment of $1.5bn in Argentina-backed debt, and a stake in the large Vaca Muerta shale formation valued by Buenos Aires at $3.5bn. Relations between Mr Brufau and Isidro Fainé, chairman of Caixabank and deputy chairman of Repsol, who brokered the earlier rejected deal, have been strained over the past year by disagreement over how to settle the YPF issue. Mr Fainé, who had previously travelled to Argentina to meet Cristina Fernández, Argentina's president, in person, did not turn up to the Repsol board meeting when the proposal he had helped design was unanimously rejected.