FreshTel Ukrainian latest technologies

History

2014

Rostelecom conducts negotiations on purchase of Freshtel operator —'Kommersant' with reference to a source in the telecommunication market reports about it. It is noted that negotiations go more than a month and that though transaction amount is not sounded, it is known of intention of Rostelecom to carry out payments with own stocks, but not money.

It is considered that Freshtel of structure of Suleyman Kerimov and Victor Pinchuk own. Earlier Transtelecom (TTK) thought of purchase of Freshtel, but it did not accept the high price of the company (more than $200 million). Besides, the president of a TTK Artem Kudryavtsev noted that negotiations on acquisition of Freshtel 'are suspended' because TransTeleCom is going to take part in tender on a frequency resource in the range of 2.5 GHz on LTE technology. And frequencies of Freshtel can be used only on WiMax technology.

2015

The Rostelecom corporation plans will invest in four companies – in Interproject, in Orion, in Progress and in Capital. According to Vedomosti, the Board of Directors of corporation will consider this question on March 27. All four companies are controlled by Comenetti Investments Ltd. also work under the FreshTel brand which renders services of wireless access of WiMax in range of 3.5 GHz of 75 regions of Russia. In 2009 the Icon Private Equity fund which vladeleets, presumably, is the Ukrainian entrepreneur Victor Pinchuk invested in the operator. Later the fund sold 25.1% of FreshTel to Suleyman Kerimov's companies.

The Kommersant newspaper in 2014 reported that shareholders of FreshTel is Vnesheconombank (VEB) and a number of Cyprus offshores. According to Vedomosti, Rosimushchestvo at the beginning of 2015 approved with the Ministry of Economics and from the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications the transaction on purchase of FreshTel by Rostelecom. It is supposed that transaction amount is 210 million rubles. However, on other sources of Vedomosti, the purchase agreement provides an award in 670 million rubles if the company gets permission to use the of frequencies for LTE network.

Rostelecom announced in the spring of 2015 approval by Board of Directors of the transaction on purchase of the Russian business of Freshtel group – to acquisition of 100% of shares in Interproject, Orion, Progress and Stolitsa companies. The acquisition value of 100% of shares will totally be 210 million rubles, the debt for the end of April, 2015 makes about 2.3 billion rubles.