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Swedish telco offloads remaining 19% stake in Russian counterpart for €881 million.
Telia Company on Tuesday sold its remaining 19% stake in MegaFon to Russian bank Gazprombank for 8.6 billion kronor (€881.4 million).
The deal comes weeks after Telia offloaded 6.2% of the Russian operator on the stock market for SEK3.2 billion, reclassifying its stake as a financial investment, rather than as an associated company.
That left Telia owning 19% of MegaFon, still enough to make it the company’s second largest shareholder. At the time, Telia committed to working with MegaFon’s main shareholder, USM Group.
"After recently commencing our exit from MegaFon by placing 6.2% of our holding on the open stock market, this divestment now puts an end to Telia Company’s ownership in MegaFon in accordance with our strategy to focus on the Nordics and Baltics," said Telia CEO Johan Dennelind, in a statement on Tuesday.
Telia unveiled plans to withdraw from Eurasia in September 2015. Since then, the Swedish incumbent has sold out of Nepal and Tajikistan, and is in the process of selling its stake in Fintur Holdings, a joint venture with Turkcell that owns stakes in Georgian operator Geocell, Moldova’s Moldcell, and Azercell in Azerbaijan. It aims to complete the Fintur sale by the end of this year.
In September, Telia sold its remaining 7% direct stake in Turkcell for SEK4.13 billion.
The decision to leave Eurasia was precipitated by damaging corruption allegations stemming from Telia’s 2007 entry into Uzbekistan and its dealings with local partner Takilant. Investigations by Dutch and U.S. authorities concluded that Telia had made corrupt payments totalling approximately US$330 million (€283.66 million). In September, Telia reached a $1 billion settlement with said authorities.
