Telenor has said it will not begin settlement talks with Russia’s Alfa Group until a related lawsuit brought against it by Farimex Products is dropped, a spokeswoman for the Norwegian group told The Moscow Times today. “As long as there is a Farimex case against us, there will be no talks,” said Anna Ivanova-Galitsina, who refused to comment on reports late last week that Telenor was close to a settlement in its dispute with Alfa Group over ownership of Russian operator VimpelCom and Ukraine’s Kyivstar. Farimex, the owner of a 0.002 percent VimpelCom stake, brought a case against Telenor in a Siberian court last year, which ordered Telenor to pay US$1.7 billion in damages for allegedly obstructing VimpelCom’s expansion into the Ukraine. Telenor is contesting the ruling, and has argued that Farimex is a front for Alfa Group, which owns 44 percent of VimpelCom. Telenor holds 29.9 percent in VimpelCom, though Russian bailiffs froze the stake earlier this month as collateral against the Farimex claim.
According to reports in the Russian press last week, Telenor made a preliminary agreement to merge VimpelCom with Kyivstar, which is 56.5 percent owned by Telenor and 43.5 percent by Alfa’s Altimo, though a deal has yet to be confirmed. Under one scenario, Altimo and Telenor would deposit their Kyivstar and VimpelCom shares in a joint-venture that they would register in the US. VimpelCom’s minority shareholders could either convert their stock into shares of the newly formed joint-venture, making the company the full owners of VimpelCom and Kyivstar, or hold on to their shares, in which case the joint-venture would own 75 percent of VimpelCom and 100 percent of Kyivstar. The proposed joint-venture would not be under the control of either Telenor or Altimo.
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