BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

11/04/2008

Turkcell Confirms Planing Bid for Belarus GSM Network

Turkey's Turkcell has announced that it plans to bid in the forthcoming sale of state-owned Belarussian mobile operator BeST. Last year, Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said that the government would sell the GSM network operator and is seeking bids of around US$500 million.

On March 5, 2008, Turkcell announced that, as part of its efforts to evaluate investment opportunities in the region, it was conducting studies in Belarus. However, at that time no definitive decision had been taken regarding these studies.

In a statement, the company said that it "has decided to conduct the necessary studies to submit a proposal directly, or through one of its subsidiaries, to the shareholders of the Belarusian Telecommunication Network (BeST), based in the Republic of Belarus, to purchase the majority of shares of the Company."

Late last year, Telekom Austria paid EUR730 million (US$1.04 billion) to acquire a 70% stake in the Belarus GSM network operator, MDC.

According to statistics from the Mobile World, MDC ended last year with some 3 million customers - compared to a mere 181,000 subscribers for BeST. Based on the enterprise price paid by Telekom Austria - on a per customer basis the most that BeST could be worth is just US$72 million.

Source:

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/30463.php

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