Austria’s EPIC plans to restructure Ukrtelecom after purchaseAustria's EPIC, whose Ukraine-based unit ESU was the only company to have filed a bid to buy the Ukrainian government's 92.79% stake in fixed-line monopoly Ukrtelecom, plans to restructure Ukrtelecom following the purchase, Peter Goldscheider, EPIC's managing partner, told PRIME-TASS late Tuesday.
Goldscheider said the planned purchase of Ukrtelecom was a long-term investment for EPIC. He also said he was surprised that Russian companies did not file any bids for the Ukrtelecom stake, adding that he expected competition from Altimo, the telecommunications arm of Russia's multi-industry holding Alfa Group, and from major Russian mobile operator MTS.
EPIC is ready to make serious investments in Ukrtelecom to carry out a large-scale restructuring of the company's operations, Goldscheider said. He also denied a rumor that EPIC was acting on behalf of Deutsche Telekom.
The State Property Fund of Ukraine announced an auction for the government's stake in Ukrtelecom in October. The starting price for the stake has been set at 10.5 billion hryvnas. Bids were being accepted until Monday. A total of seven companies expressed an interest in taking part in the auction, and five of them signed confidentiality agreements.
According to earlier reports, MTS and Ukrainian financial and industrial group System Capital Management (SCM) were considering taking part in the auction.
On Wednesday, the fund announced a tender to choose an independent appraiser of the government's stake in Ukrtelecom. Bids for the tender are accepted till December 30, while the tender is scheduled for January 6, 2011, the fund said. The fund is carrying out a tender because only one company had filed a bid for Ukrtelecom stake. The fund's Chairman Alexander Ryabchenko said Tuesday that the stake could not be estimated at less than 10.5 billion hryvnas. An independent appraiser will have 30 days to estimate the value of the stake, the fund said.
According to Ukrainian brokers, Ukrtelecom shares fell 10% on Tuesday and continued to fall on Wednesday. The company's capitalization fell 16.8% during the two days to 9.9 billion hryvnas.
EPIC is a full-service investment house for Central and Southeastern Europe, Turkey, Russia, and other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). It focuses on voucher privatization, direct equity investment, and providing consulting and investment services.
Established in 2005 in Kiev, ESU focuses on rolling out and modernizing mobile operators' networks, providing technical support, supplying equipment, and providing logistics services. It has branches across Ukraine.
The company's net profit amounted to U.S. $430,000 in 2009, while its revenue was at $16.5 million. The accounting standards used were not available.
(с) PRIME-TASS
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Privatising Ukrtelecom: finish ahead? – FT.com
A cloud was cast over the latest stage of Ukraine’s marathon campaign to privatise Ukrtelecom, a state telephone company, as officials announced on Tuesday that only one bidder had registered for the auction.
Epic, an Austria-based investment firm, emerged as the sole bidder for a 93 per cent stake in Ukrtelecom, Ukraine’s fixed-line telephone monopoly, for $1.3bn. Ukrtelecom’s shares on Ukraine’s stock market plunged by nearly 9 per cent on the news, a clear negative reaction to what was supposed to be the first big privatization tender run by Viktor Yanukovich since he took over as Kiev’s president last February.
The sale was closely watched to gauge how transparently privatisation will be conducted under his leadership. Concerns remain that valuable assets could be sold off at below market prices to well-connected oligarchs, as happened when Yanukovich served as prime minister in 2004.
The government owns 93 per cent of the company and the privatisation auction was originally planned for December 28. But with only one bid registered, government officials said the sale will be put off until early next year, so that an appraiser could establish a final sale price in the absence of a competitive tender. If Epic agrees to the price set, it could be chosen as the tender winner.
But experts already fear that Ukraine’s government missed its opportunity to sell Ukrtelecom transparently and for its fair worth.
Analysts questioned the transparency of the sale from the get go, when it was launched in October amidst controversy. Tender rules restricted leading global telecoms companies from the bidding. Many top European telecoms companies that have to various degrees expressed interest in Ukrtelecom over the years – including Deutsche Telekom and Norway’s Telenor – were prohibited from taking part in the tender because they are more than 25 per cent government-owned.
A second tender condition prevented bidding by telecoms that had more than a 25 per cent share on the Ukrainian fixed-line and mobile telecom market.
On Tuesday, speculation loomed that Epic was acting as a front for Ukrainian or Russian oligarchs.
Referring to Epic, Tomas Fiala, managing director of Kiev-based investment bank Dragon Capital, said: “They are most likely acting on behalf of a Ukrainian or Russian group. I don’t think Epic has the financial resources to make such a sizable investment on their own.”
Speaking with the Financial Times by telephone, Epic’s managing partner Peter Goldscheider insisted his firm was “bidding alone,” and hoped to raise financing from banks to wrap up the purchase.
“This would be our biggest investment by far,” he said.
“There are no strings attached, no hidden interests,” he added.
In the months after the sale was announced this fall, analysts had expected bids from Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, a close backer of Yanukovich, and Russia’s telecom groups such as Sistema.
Officials at Sistema and its regional mobile phone network operator MTS said their group decided not to bid, concluding that the starting price of $1.3bn was overpriced. An official at System Capital Management, Akhmetov’s holding company, was less clear. Asked if his group could take part in the tender as a partner of Epic via a consortium, he said on condition of anonymity: “not presently.”
“Given the circumstances, how long the company has been on the block and poorly managed, selling it for the starting price to any private investor is progress,” Fiala said. “But if it was competitive tender, Ukraine could have raised up to 1.8bn,” he added.
Ukrtelecom controls about 80 percent of the fixed-line market in Ukraine, a country of 46m citizens. A highly-bureaucratic and mismanaged corporate dinosaur, experts say Ukrtelecom has lost much of its value in the past decade, falling decades behind European peers in terms of introducing new telecom technologies. It has been slated for privatisation for more than a decade but the tender has been repeatedly delayed amidst political squabbling.
Ukrtelecom holds the country’s sole 3G licence and has a relatively small mobile business but it earned only $6m in the first half of this year. Corporate and private clients have increasingly turned to better quality services provided by privately-owned mobile and fixed-line operators.
(c) Roman Olearchyk, ft.com
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Ukraine Delays Ukrtelecom Sale Receiving One Bid – BloombergUkraine’s government delayed its Dec. 28 sale of phone company VAT Ukrtelecom because it attracted only one bidder, the head of the state property fund said.
Austria-based Epic Financial Consulting Gesellschaft’s subsidiary in Ukraine was the only bidder that paid the guaranteed deposit of 1.05 billion hryvnia ($131.6 million), the fund’s head, Oleksandr Ryabchenko, told reporters today in Kiev.
“Thus the auction is canceled,” Ryabchenko said. “Now, an independent company will value Ukrtelecom and that price will be offered to Epic’s subsidiary ESU.”
Ukraine, which owns almost 93 percent of Ukrtelecom, has been putting off the sale because of disputes between state agencies. An auction scheduled for December 2009 was also canceled. This time the country set the minimum price for its stake at 10.5 billion hryvnia.
The state property fund will announce the bid for an independent company to value Ukrtelecom tomorrow and will pick the winner in 15 days, Ryabchenko said. The winner has up to 30 days to value the phone company and the price cannot be lower than the minimum, he added.
February Sale
“I think the sale may be in February,” Ryabchenko said. “After Ukrtelecom is valued, the state property fund has also one month to finalise details though I think it will not take us more than a week.”
Ukrtelecom reported income of 47.9 million hryvnia in the first half of the year under Ukrainian accounting rules. The company had a net loss of 124.13 million hryvnia in the same period a year earlier.
“We’ve known this asset for over 10 years,” Epic Managing Partner Peter Goldscheider said today in a telephone interview from Vienna. “This is huge for us.”
As financial investors, Epic would try listing Ukrtelecom on Kiev’s exchange or finding another buyer, Goldscheider said. The Vienna-based company expects Ukraine to calculate a final price for the telephone network within 45 days, at which point Epic can still decide to walk away, he said.
Ukrtelekom would be Epic’s biggest acquisition. Croatia’s Valamar Hotels and Resourts group, with 3,000 employees, is the company’s largest current asset.
The fund also put off the sale of Ukrainian international Airlines, which is almost 62 percent state-owned, until January. Ukraine’s government planned to sell the stake by the end of this month.
The government, which seeks to raise at least 6.35 billion hryvnia this year from state asset sales, received 938.7 million hryvnia as of Dec. 9, the fund said on Dec. 14.
(c) Daryna Krasnolutska, Bloomberg
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Ukrainian Utel: Roaming in the Motherland of Prince Hamlet3G (UMTS) mobile operator «Ukrtelecom (TM Utel) introduced to its subscribers while in Denmark international roaming service. The project has become effective thanked to its Danish roaming partner Hi3G ACCESS AB, as the company's press service reported.
So, currently Utel's roaming operates in 56 countries worldwide.
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Mobile Internet from Utel near the Sphinx and the Pyramids3G (UMTS) mobile operator «Ukrtelecom (TM Utel) introduced to its subscribers mobile Internet thanked to its Egyptian roaming partner Etisalat Egypt, as the company's press service reported.
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Ukrtelecom plans to commutate “OHO!” (“Wow!”) subscribers over unlimited Internet before the end of January 2010Telecommunications state monopolist Ukrtelecom is planning to commutate all of its "OHO!" broadband Internet access subscribers over unlimited tarriffs, as the press service of the company reported.
According to the Ukrtelecom, the unlimited tariff plans will be automatically effective for the last 40 thousand "OHO!" subscribers that currently use the old tariff proposals.
Earlier above 700 thousand "OHO!" subscribers switched to the unlimited tariff plans by their own. And it was about 60 thousand subscribers that were automatically shifted by the company in August 2009.
It should be stressed the cost of services will not rise.
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Ukraine and the international market of space communicationsThe Canadian company MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) has signed a contract to build the first Ukrainian communications satellite and its ground support infrastructure for the National Space Agency of Ukraine.
The contract totaled $254 million. As experts forecast increased demand for the capacity of this spacecraft because of the transition of many foreign and domestic TV channels to HD format in 2011-2012, the project promises to be very beneficial for Ukraine.
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Russian Internet provider enters Ukrainian broadband marketSince December 1, 2009 the team of high-speed broadband Internet access players in Ukraine includes a new player. It's "Ukrtransset" company that will operate under the brand «Summa Telecom». At the first stage the company covers more than 50 thousand households in Kiev: Internet services by "Ukrtransset" will use Obolon' residents of Kiev.
Founded in early 2009 Ukrtransset is a member company of Russia's Summa Telecom group. In Ukraine Russian invader has its own network based on FTTB technology ( «optics to buildings"), that allows to provide a fixed broadband Internet access at speeds up to 100 Mbps.
In 2010, Ukrtransset plans to significantly strengthen its position and reach over 150 thousand households, and by the end of the year - to become one of the leaders of the capital-market broadband Internet in the mass segment.
"The market for broadband access to the Internet in Ukraine in general and in Kiev in particular is in active growth phase. The level of penetration of broadband Internet in Kyiv, for example, is about 40%. The level of broadband penetration in Ukraine does not exceed 20%. For comparison: the level of broadband penetration in Moscow is more than 70%. It means that in the closest future the Ukrainian market will grow rapidly. Experience that Summa Telecom has acquired in Russia, as well as the professionalism of the Ukrainian team will allow Summa Telecom to take a significant market's share", - said Maxim Evdokimov, director of Ukrtranset.
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Kyivstar staff for 9 months was shrinked by 471 peopleKyivstar, Ukrainian mobile monster has cut a number of its employees for January-September 2009 by 471 people, compared with the same pewriod of 2008 (5,5 thousand.).
Thus, the total Kyivstar staff at the moment equals to 5,029.
According to the company's press-service, the redistribution of staff was planned in advance.
According to Kyivstar's interpretation, the main reasons for the staff's reduction are negative results of the annual assessment (20 pers.), outsourcing (170 pers.). 200 people left the company due to optimization of seasonal staff call-center.
In addition, the personnel involved in the core business, was partially cut down (150 pers.), while the rest got other jobs.
Kyivstar staff for 9 months was shrinked by 471 people
Kyivstar, Ukrainian mobile monster has cut a number of its employees for January-September 2009 by 471 people, compared with the same pewriod of 2008 (5,5 thousand.).
Thus, the total Kyivstar staff at the moment equals to 5,029.
According to the company's press-service, the redistribution of staff was planned in advance.
According to Kyivstar's interpretation, the main reasons for the staff's reduction are negative results of the annual assessment (20 pers.), outsourcing (170 pers.). 200 people left the company due to optimization of seasonal staff call-center.
In addition, the personnel involved in the core business, was partially cut down (150 pers.), while theKyivstar staff for 9 months was shrinked by 471 people
Kyivstar, Ukrainian mobile monster has cut a number of its employees for January-September 2009 by 471 people, compared with the same pewriod of 2008 (5,5 thousand.).
Thus, the total Kyivstar staff at the moment equals to 5,029.
According to the company's press-service, the redistribution of staff was planned in advance.
According to Kyivstar's interpretation, the main reasons for the staff's reduction are negative results of the annual assessment (20 pers.), outsourcing (170 pers.). 200 people left the company due to optimization of seasonal staff call-center.
In addition, the personnel involved in the core business, was partially cut down (150 pers.), while the rest got other jobs.Kyivstar staff for 9 months was shrinked by 471 people
Kyivstar, Ukrainian mobile monster has cut a number of its employees for January-September 2009 by 471 people, compared with the same pewriod of 2008 (5,5 thousand.).
Thus, the total Kyivstar staff at the moment equals to 5,029.
According to the company's press-service, the redistribution of staff was planned in advance.
According to Kyivstar's interpretation, the main reasons for the staff's reduction are negative results of the annual assessment (20 pers.), outsourcing (170 pers.). 200 people left the company due to optimization of seasonal staff call-center.
In addition, the personnel involved in the core business, was partially cut down (150 pers.), while the rest got other jobs. Kyivstar staff for 9 months was shrinked by 471 people
Kyivstar, Ukrainian mobile monster has cut a number of its employees for January-September 2009 by 471 people, compared with the same pewriod of 2008 (5,5 thousand.).
Thus, the total Kyivstar staff at the moment equals to 5,029.
According to the company's press-service, the redistribution of staff was planned in advance.
According to Kyivstar's interpretation, the main reasons for the staff's reduction are negative results of the annual assessment (20 pers.), outsourcing (170 pers.). 200 people left the company due to optimization of seasonal staff call-center.
In addition, the personnel involved in the core business, was partially cut down (150 pers.), while the rest got other jobs.Kyivstar staff for 9 months was shrinked by 471 people
Kyivstar, Ukrainian mobile monster has cut a number of its employees for January-September 2009 by 471 people, compared with the same pewriod of 2008 (5,5 thousand.).
Thus, the total Kyivstar staff at the moment equals to 5,029.
According to the company's press-service, the redistribution of staff was planned in advance.
According to Kyivstar's interpretation, the main reasons for the staff's reduction are negative results of the annual assessment (20 pers.), outsourcing (170 pers.). 200 people left the company due to optimization of seasonal staff call-center.
In addition, the personnel involved in the core business, was partially cut down (150 pers.), while the rest got other jobs. rest got other jobs.Kyivstar, Ukrainian mobile monster has cut a number of its employees for January-September 2009 by 471 people, compared with the same pewriod of 2008 (5,5 thousand.).
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