Russian Firm Keen on TCI Shares
A Russian firm has shown interest to purchasing shares of the company, managing director of Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) said.
Saber Feizi told Fars that Altimo, the telecoms arm of Russian conglomerate Alfa Group, has in recent weeks shown willing to buy the company’s stakes.
Feizi, however, stressed that the company has not yet received any official request from the Russian company.
He also rejected news carried by a section of the foreign media that Altimo has been secretly negotiating a deal to buy fifty percent of the shares of Iranian mobile-phone company Iraphone and/or Taliya.
Altimo puts the value of its businesses at about $20 billion.
Part of about 100,000-billion-rial stakes of 33 telecommunication companies will be floated in the stock exchange by September 22.
The articles of association of TCI are being drafted to pave the way for the privatization of TCI in line with Article 44 of the Constitution. Article 44 seeks large-scale privatization in key economic areas which were off bound for private enterprises for almost three decades.
Hurd group must rein in ‘rogue’ firm
Martin Tomkinson andBen Laurance
FORMER foreign secretary Lord Hurd and a group of blue-chip establishment figures are this weekend coming under increased pressure to rein in the activities of a company that has been branded “the corporate equivalent of a rogue state’’.
Hurd is a member of the six-man “advisory board” of the telecoms giant Altimo, a subsidiary of the Russian conglomerate Alfa Group.
Altimo has been involved in a rancorous row with the Norwegian telecoms group Telenor over their jointly owned Ukrain-ian mobile-phone company, Kyvistar.
Telenor has accused Altimo of using underhand tactics to try to gain control of Kyvistar and took the Russian company to the International Panel of Arbitration in New York. The panel was asked to rule on whether Altimo had broken a shareholders’ agreement spelling out the basis of the relationship between the Russian group and its Norwegian counterpart.
The panel this month ruled in favour of Telenor. It said Altimo had broken the shareholders’ agreement with Telenor; that it had breached a noncompetition pact with the Norwegians; and had wrongly tried to wriggle out of an agreement under which disputes would be resolved by arbitration in New York.
But Altimo has responded by saying that “according to Ukrain-ian law, it is impossible to recognise and enforce the arbitration award in Ukraine’’. The Russian company is refusing to comply with the New York panel ruling.
Now Telenor is appealing to Hurd and the other members of the heavyweight advisory board. They are: Sir Roderick Lyne, who was British ambassador to Russia; Kurt Hellstrom, president and chief executive of Ericsson until 2003; Sir Julian Horn-Smith, who spent more than two decades with Vodafone, becoming the company’s deputy chief executive until his departure last summer; Jack Rosen, chairman of the Council for World Jewry and a former confidant of Bill Clinton; and Peter Watson, who sat on the US National Security Council during the first Bush administration.
A letter sent last week by Jan Edvard Thygesen, executive vice-president of Telenor, said: “By violating the clear terms of the shareholders’ agreements that it actively negotiated and executed . . . Altimo has become the corporate equivalent of a rogue state.”
The letter calls on the members of the advisory board to “address these issues and take actions to encourage Altimo to . . . promptly and fully comply with the arbitration awards by which they are bound”.
Hurd and his colleagues have not spoken publicly about Altimo’s behaviour. The Sunday Times disclosed last month that Altimo had been trying to negotiate a deal to buy a half share in the Iranian mobile-phone company Iraphone.
Telenor is trying to put pressure on the Altimo advisers to show that they really are monitoring the company’s activities.
A Telenor spokesman told The Sunday Times: “What, if any, moral responsibility does the advisory board have for the actions of Altimo?’’ He said: “Their outrageous behaviour not just in the Ukraine but in Iran, Indonesia and other places must surely concern the members of the advisory board. Bluntly, what are they paid to do?’’ The members of Altimo’s advisory board have no fiduciary responsibility. But they do lend gravitas to Altimo, the telecoms offshoot of Alfa Group, headed by 43-year-old Russian oligarch Mikhail Friedman.
This is not the first time that Hurd has become embroiled in controversy since quitting as foreign secretary. As deputy chairman of NatWest Markets ? now part of Royal Bank of Scotland? he was a key figure in the privati-sation of Telekom Serbia. Just 12 months after leaving office, Hurd had a breakfast meeting with the then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, thought to have been a turning point in getting the pri-vatisation process under way.
Attempts to contact Hurd were unsuccessful.
Taliya future in Iran uncertain: Official
Monday, August 27, 2007 - ?2005 IranMania.com
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LONDON, August 27 (IranMania) - Taliya, which provides services for credit SIM cards, has not yet met its commitments to increase the number of mobile phone subscribers, a senior Telecommunications Company of Iran (TCI) official said.
Vafa Ghaffarian, who heads the TCI Board of Directors, told ISNA that Rafsanjan Industrial Complex (RIC) has tried its best to find new investors for Taliya network.
Taliya, the first nationwide prepaid mobile network in Iran was introduced by RIC. ?If Taliya finds new investors, the mobile phone network will witness a rise in the number of subscribers in future,? he noted.
Referring to the status of Advanced Communication System (ACS) project, he said the initial operations of the project have been completed and the tender has been announced.
Twenty companies have taken part in the tender until now, Ghaffarian said, adding two pilot phases are also planned.
Some 200 subscribers will be provided ACS services in the first stage and 5,000 in the second phase, he concluded |
