Tag Archives: telecoms

Armenia’s Ucom to be handed to Orange

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.

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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)

Cell repays loan to Kazakh banks

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.

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(News report from Issue No. 250, published on Oct. 2 2015)

Uzbek corruption probe undermines TeliaSonera

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.

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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

VimpelCom in Uzbekistan appoints new CEO

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.

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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

TeliaSonera companies reassure Kazakh, Uzbek, Azerbaijani customers

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.

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(News report from Issue No. 249, published on Sept. 25 2015)

Stock market: Centerra Gold, KAZ Minerals

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.

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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Mobile operator TeliaSonera wants to sell C.Asia & S.Caucasus assets

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.

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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

TeliaSonera wants to quit Central Asia and the South Caucasus

ALMATY, SEPT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dogged by various corruption allegations against its businesses in Central Asia, Swedish-based TeliaSonera said it wanted to quit the Eurasian telecoms market to focus on European operations.

In the medium-term, TeliaSonera’s assets in the growing mobile telecoms markets of Central Asia and South Caucasus region could represent an attractive business for companies looking to enter the market. TeliaSonera owns stakes in telecoms companies in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. These are Azercell, Geo-cell, KcellP, Tcell and Ucell.

In most of these countries, TeliaSonera has been under the spotlight for its opaque corporate governance, an issue that its CEO, Johan Dennelind, referenced.

“Thanks to two years of hard work to improve the Eurasian operations, not least from a corporate governance and sustainability perspective, we now have better and more well-managed companies which we believe others can successfully develop further,” a TeliaSonera press release quoted him as saying.

TeliaSonera appointed Mr Dennelind as CEO in 2013 after a corruption probe into its operations in Uzbekistan forced the previous CEO and most of the directors to resign.

In the past two years, Swedish prosecutors have opened investigations into alleged bribes that the company paid to secure access to mobile networks and licences in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. More recently, in May 2015, a Swedish newspaper reported on another possible case of bribery in Azerbaijan.

In 2013, TeliaSonera sacked Tero Kivisaari, a senior executive, for paying $350m a few years earlier to a Gibraltar company linked to Gulnara Karimova, daughter of Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov, in exchange for a 3G licence. TeliaSonera owns 94% of Ucell, an Uzbekistan-based, mobile operator.

A 2013 deal that saw Kcell, in which TeliaSonera owns a 62% stake, pay Kazakh PM Karim Massimov $200m for network access has also come under scrutiny.

Analysts said that the pressure had been building on TeliaSonera and that they had been expecting TeliaSonera to cut its losses in its Eurasia division for some time.

Bakytzhan Khochshanov, an analyst at Halyk Finance, said that he thought a Russian or Turkish telecoms company might be interested in buying TeliaSonera’s stakes.

“Potential buyers are likely to be the largest ones, and among them either Megafon or MTS, as Vimpelcom already has an exposure to Kazakhstan’s market with its Beeline brand,” he said.

“Among the other potential bidders could also be Turkish operators, with Turkcell already having a stake in Kcell through Fintur Holding.”

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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

LG to handle Uzbekistan’s database

SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — LG CNS, a Korea-based global IT service provider and subsidiary of LG, signed an agreement with the Uzbek government to manage its various databases. The parties have created the joint venture, LG CNS Uzbekistan. CEO Kim Daehoon said he wanted to use the joint-venture to pursue more government-orientated projects in Central Asia.

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(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)

Armenia buys French telecoms company

JULY 21 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – French telecoms company Orange is considering selling its Armenian subsidiary to Ucom, an Armenian fibre optic cable. Orange has been operating in Armenia since 2009 and has 650,000 subscribers.

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(News report from Issue No. 241, published on July 23 2015)