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Sistema Crosses the Himalayas
AFK Sistema, which has been active in India since September of last year, will enter the markets of China and Bangladesh as well. The company has received a license to provide cellular services in China. In Bangladesh, it is negotiating with a local provider over the purchase of a local operator. The most likely acquisition is the state Teletalk company, which is assessed at $300-500 million. Sistema is going to run into competition in the region from another Russian cellular company. VimpelCom has begun its expansion with Vietnam.
Vladimir Evtushenkov, the main owner of Sistema, told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about his acquisitions of licenses in the border areas of China and Bangladesh at a meeting on Friday, Interfax reports.
There are now five operators on the GSM standard (Grameenphone, Banglalink, Aktel, Warid, Teletalk) and one on CDMA (Citycell). According to the Bangladeshi commission on telecommunications regulation, as of the end of May, the total subscriber base in Bangladesh is 42 million, with saturation of the market at 25 percent. Teletalk is the only state operator. It has about 990,000 subscribers.
AFK Sistema was founded in 1993. Evtushenko owns 62.13 percent of its shares. Its main assets are cellular operators MTS (52.8% of shares) and Sky Link (about 50%), Comstar-OTC (53%), landline provider MGTS (33%), long-distance operator (43%), Svyazinvest (25%), Sintroniks (71%), the Moscow Bank of Reconstruction and Development (96%), developer Sistema-Gals (77%), the Children’s World chain of stores (100%), Intourist tour operator and others. Its consolidated receipts in 2007 were $13.7 billion and its net profit was $1.6 billion. Its capitalization on the London Stock Exchange on Friday was $13.751 billion.
Sistema bought 10 percent of Shyam Telelink last year and has since increased its share to 74 percent. The company plans to invest about $5-7 billion in the Indian company.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 14, 2008
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