Alfa Group to Buy Out Its Own Bitel
Management of Kyrgyz biggest cellular operator, Bitel, announced Monday the company’s assets will be sold to Russian Alfa Group. The sale is the forced one, Bitel representatives say, and roots in threats of local authorities to delicense the company. The analysts think different, pointing out today’s owners of Bitel are the firms tied to Alfa Group and the aim of the deal is to protect the assets from court claims of another cellular giant – MTS.
It was Bitel General Director Denis Shershnev that spoke of the intention to sell Bitel to Alfa Group. “We are studying chances to sell our assets to Sky Mobile, a subsidiary of Alfa Group,” Shershnev specified.
Bitel will retain only the GSM license after the deal, parting with all its assets, including liabilities to creditors.
Altimo that manages telecom assets of Alfa Group confirmed negotiations yesterday, but declined to elaborate, saying the preliminary results will be known by late this week.
Bitel is the biggest GSM operator in Kyrgyzstan with the market share of 88 percent there. Its market price is no secret for players. On December 12, 2005, Russia’s biggest cellular operator, MTS, paid $150 million for 51 percent in Bitel to Tarino Ltd., which was its sole holder at that time and which owner is Alliance Capital.
It turned out, the title to Bitel had been sold even before the date of the deal between MTS and Alliance Capital. It went first to firms of Alfa Group and then to Rezervspetsmet and the latter was upheld in the Supreme Court of Kyrgyzstan December 15, 2005.
Regardless, MTS isn’t going to yield. “We have no operating control of Bitel but we are asserting the rights for the company in every possible court,” MTS briefer Kirill Alyavdin made clear yesterday.
“In late June, Alfa bought Sky Mobile, which sole asset is the GSM license for all Kyrgyzstan,” iKS-Consulting analysts Tatiana Tolmacheva said in an effort to explain the true reason of the deal. “Straight after it, the authorities of the republic threatened to delicense Bitel, and Bitel offered to sell all assets to Alfa.”
So, even if MTS is eventually upheld in courts and gets Bitel, it will have to start the cellular business from scratch in Kyrgyzstan.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 04, 2006
|
