OCT. 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian telecoms company VimpelCom said it is selling 50,000 phone towers across the former Soviet Union for $5b. VimpelCom, headquartered in the Netherlands, hired several banks to broker the deal. Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are among the countries involved in the deal.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Telenor, a Norwegian telecoms firm, said it is ready to sell its stake in Vimpelcom, a Russian company that also operates in Central Asia under the Beeline brand (Oct. 5). Vimpelcom is under investigation in the US and in the Netherlands for allegedly paying a bribe to enter the Uzbek market.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
ALMATY, OCT. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Following hard on the heels of Scandinavian rival TeliaSonera, Norwegian telecoms company Telenor effectively said it wanted to quit Central Asia and the South Caucasus when it announced that it would sell its 33% stake in Russian mobile operator Vimpelcom.
Vimpelcom owns several subsidiaries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus under its Beeline brand and allegations of corruption, much like those that have dogged TeliaSonera’s companies in the region, have gathered momentum over the past year.
Vimpelcom, which is headquartered in the Netherlands, has had a rough year losing about one third of its share value because of the worsening economic downturn in Russia and the general lack of profitability for telecoms companies across the Eurasian region.
Sigve Brekke, Telenor’s CEO, said the company was leaving the post- Soviet region to focus on its core operations in Europe but analysts said the real reason may well be the allegations of bribery levelled at the Vimpelcom subsidiary in Uzbekistan. Indra Overland, a research professor at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, said the corruption scandal involving Vimpelcom in Uzbekistan had damaged Telenor’s reputation.
“Telenor has been badly burned by its implication in the corruption scandal in Uzbekistan,” he said.
News that Telenor wants to quit Central Asia and the South Caucasus is another blow to the region’s reputation as a place for Western companies to do business.
Overshadowed by an increasingly gloomy economic outlook which has forced currencies to devalue and inflation to rise, Western companies in Central Asia also appear to have had enough of the region’s suspect corporate governance record.
An allegation of bribery emerged against Vimpelcom subsidiaries during investigations in the US, Sweden and in the Netherlands last year. Prosecutors said Vimpelcom had paid a bribe to gain access to Uzbek mobile licences, similar to a charge levied against TeliaSonera.
Telenor’s shares could go up for sale for approximately $2.4b and analysts said Vimpelcom’s main stake- holder Mikhail Fridman might seize the opportunity to consolidate his ownership. Daniel Johansson, an analyst at Fondsfinans, told Bloomberg: “There’s zero chance that it will be someone else completely unknown, like a Western investor.”
Vimpelcom has not commented on speculation it could buy Telenor’s stake in its businesses.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 7 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Armenia’s Ucom, best known for its fibre optic cable business, said it wanted to hand Orange Armenia to three banks to guarantee its liquidity during the increasingly tough economic climate. The Armenian mobile regulator said it will consider the decision later this week. The loss-making Orange Armenia was owned by French company Orange until Ucom bought it in August.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
SEPT. 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kcell, one of the biggest players in Kazakhstan’s telecoms market, appears to re-organising its debt. It repaid a syndicated loan worth 14.8b tenge ($55m) to Citibank Kazakhstan and RBS Kazakhstan, days after opening a 17b credit line with Kazkommertsbank. Sweden- based TeliaSonera owns 62% of Kcell. It said last month that it wants to quit Eurasian markets.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)
SEPT. 25 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TeliaSonera last week sounded its retreat from Central Asia after trying to fight back against allegations of corruption and bribery made against its companies in the region over the past three years.
It’s a humbling moment for Telia- Sonera, the Stockholm-based mobile operator, that once had ambitions to dominate the South Caucasus and Central Asia region.
The company which has most undermined TeliaSonera’s reputation and made its position untenable was Ucell, its Uzbek subsidiary.
Prosecutors across Europe and in the US have launched investigations into alleged bribes of up to $325m that TeliaSoneria may have paid a Gibraltar-based company in 2007 and 2008
to access the Uzbek mobile phone market. The Gibraltar company was called Takilant and was closely linked to Gulnara Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.
And if the allegations have been TeliaSonera’s undoing, they have also undermined Ms Karimova,
Once touted as a near-certain to replace her father, she is now under house arrest in Tashkent. Most of her allies are in jail and her assets in Europe have been seized.
When TeliaSonera does finally offload its Uzbek subsidiary it will have left an indelible mark on Uzbekistan’s history — in the mobile phone market, in corporate governance and in politics.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Unitel, a telecoms company based in Uzbekistan, appointed Dmitry Shukov, formerly head of Sistema Shyam Teleservices, the Indian branch of MTS, as its CEO. Unitel, which is owned by Amsterdam-based Vimpelcom, operates under the Beeline brand and has around 10m customers in Uzbekistan. VimpelCom’s owners are Russian magnate Mikheil Friedman and Norway’s Telenor.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
ALMATY, SEPT. 18-21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Shortly after Swedish telecoms TeliaSonera said last week it was leaving Central Asia and the South Caucasus, its local brands were quickly reassuring worried customers they were not quitting altogether.
Azercell, Geocell, Kcell, Tcell and Ucell, TeliaSonera’s assets in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, all issued statements saying they will continue to operate.
Rumours still swirled but they focused on who would takeover TeliaSonera’s assets. Turkcell, which through Fintur is already a stakeholder in Azercell, Geocell and Kcell, is favourite. TeliaSonera also owns a stake in Fintur.
“To explore our strategic options to acquire the remaining stake in Fintur, we have initiated the process to appoint a strategic and financial advisor,” Turkcell said.
Analysts had mixed reaction. Some said TeliaSonera’s assets would attract decent bids, others that the poor state of the Kazakh economy would undermine their value.
Alexander Vasiliyev, editor of the website Profit.kz said Kcell would be a good buy for a global telecoms company.
“It continues to lay golden eggs, it is the largest player in the Kazakh market,” he told Kapital.kz.
Aivar Baikenov, Head of Research at Asyl-Invest, disagreed. He singled out the drop in the value of the Kazakh tenge, down 40% in a year, as a major problem.
“Kazakhstan is not attractive for foreign investors due to the devaluing tenge. I suppose Kcell could be interesting for local or maybe Russian investors,” he said.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)
SEPT. 11-18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Canadian mining company Centerra Gold saw its stock price on the Toronto Stock Exchange jump over 16% to 7.34 Canadian dollars, after having slumped in the past three weeks, due to the signing of a new exploration licence in British Columbia. Centerra’s main asset, the Kumtor gold mine, is located in Kyrgyzstan. London listed KAZ Minerals, was down 6% to 152 pence due to low copper prices. Kazakhstan-focused Roxi Petroleum gained 4.4% this week, to 8.75 pence.
Kcell, one of Kazakhstan’s largest telecoms, lost 2% on Sept. 17 after its mother company TeliaSonera said it would leave Eurasian markets.
London-listed Bank of Georgia surged 3.9% this week to 1,907 pence. The GDR stock of Georgia’s TBC Bank lost 6.5% this week in London, down to $9.25 per share, though it had fallen to $9.11 on Sept. 14.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 18 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – TeliaSonera, the Swedish telecoms company, wants to sell its stakes in mobile phone companies across the Central Asia and South Caucasus region after a series of high-profile corruption and bribery allegations dragged down its operations.
The Stockholm-based company owns stakes in Azercell, Geocell, Ucell, Kcell and Tcell and analysts said that any telecoms company looking to pick up a bargain may be able to buy its assets cheaply.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
