Sunoco a target of a Russian takeover?

A private-equity company's new stake in NASCAR fuel supplier Sunoco could well herald an impending acquisition of the oil refiner and marketer – perhaps to one of Russia's big energy companies.

Late Friday, Harbinger Capital Partners revealed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it had taken a 6.6% stake in Sunoco, which has been struggling with unfavorable market conditions. Refiners in general have been squeezed by rising crude oil prices, which shot up so quickly this year that gasoline and other petroleum products could not be marked up quite as fast.

Sunoco suffers from a second problem: its refineries are optimized for light, sweet crude, which is increasingly a smaller part of the overall mix of what is available in the market.

Philadelphia-based Sunoco saw its shares rise 6.1% after the Harbinger filing on Monday, and it added 1.0%, or 36 cents, on Tuesday, closing at $37.15. That's still down 52.9% from a 12-month high of $78.80 hit in October. More at Forbes.com