Doing Tehran. Big fight for Central Asia!! Group says outbid TeliaSonera for Turkcell
Reuters, Moscow, March 30
Russian investment group Alfa Group said on Thursday it had outbid TeliaSonera for a stake in Turkey’s top mobile phone service provider Turkcell, deepening an already bitter business conflict between the two.
“On hearing of TeliaSonera’s press release of March 25, where they said they are buying 27 per cent of Turkcell for $3.1bn, we have made an offer ... to buy the same stake for a higher sum,” Kirill Babayev, vice-president at Alfa’s telecoms arm, told Reuters. He declined to elaborate.
Nordic telecoms company TeliaSonera said it still expected to complete the purchase of the Turkcell stake from the debt-laden Cukurova group. That sale would raise TeliaSonera’s holding in Turkcell to 64.3 per cent.
“We have an agreement with Cukurova to buy the remaining shares in Turkcell Holdings, and that deal will be completed,” TeliaSonera spokesman Mikael Kongstad told Reuters.
TeliaSonera shares dipped 1.2 per cent on news of the rival bid by Alfa Telecom, part of the investment group controlled by Mikhail Fridman, ranked by Forbes magazine as Russia’s second-richest man.
Alfa Group is already in a dispute with Teliasonera and its allies over the ownership of a one-quarter stake in Russia’s No.3 mobile phone firm, MegaFon.
Analysts have said that, were it not for the conflict, it would be logical for Alfa to merge MegaFon with Russia’s No.2 mobile company Vimpelcom which it controls, to create a new market leader.
Turkcell said the purchase of 27 per cent of the company by TeliaSonera would be on the agenda of its annual general meeting on April 29.
The stock exchange had suspended trading in Turkcell temporarily ahead of the announcement and after its reopening it was trading at 9.35 new lira, up 5.1 per cent, on the prospect of a bidding contest between TeliaSonera and Alfa.
Turkcell, the only Turkish company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, had 23.4m subscribers at the end of last year and has a market share of about 70 per cent. |
