Ukrainian authorities prohibit sale of Turkcell's local assets to billionaire Xavier Niel
MOSCOW. March 12 (Interfax) - The Anti-monopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) has established grounds for prohibiting one of French billionaire Xavier Niel's companies from acquiring Turkcell's assets in Ukraine, Ukrainian media reported, citing AMCU's statement.
AMCU said that it was necessary to verify the relationship regarding control of the Lifecell LLC mobile operator, which was part of the proposed transaction, and Turkcell, its parent company, with an individual against whom Ukraine has imposed sanctions.
"When considering DVL Telecom's applications to acquire control of the Lifecell Group, there was a need to verify the control relations of participants in the concentration, particularly the Lifecell Group and the Turkcell Group, with the person to whom personal special economic and other restrictive measures/sanctions were applied as per the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine," AMCU said.
Consequently, AMCU has established grounds for prohibiting the transactions after having reviewed DVL Telecom's applications to acquire control of Lifecell LLC, the Global Bilgi LLC contact center outsourcing company, and the Ukrtower LLC tower rental services provider.
AMCU has permitted DVL Telecom to acquire control of Ukraine's fixed-line and digital services operator, Datagroup-Volya, of Datagroup Holding Limited.
Datagroup-Volya is a leader in the telecommunications industry in Ukraine. The company is also actively developing cloud services, with Volia's data center providing cloud and physical servers for use, and offering hosting of client servers, IaaS cloud infrastructure, and related services. The company has been selected as a service provider to host more than 3,000 servers. The group was formed from Datagroup's purchase in 2021 of the Volia group of companies, a provider of pay television and cable high-speed internet access services.
At the end of 2020, over 96% of Datagroup belonged to Emerging Europe Growth Fund II LP (EEGF II), managed by the U.S.'s Horizon Capital investment company. Yelena Kosharnaya is the founder and CEO of Horizon Capital.
On December 29, 2023, Turkcell signed an agreement to transfer 100% of the shares, as well as all rights and debts of Lifecell LLC, Ukraine's third largest mobile operator, as well as Global Bilgi LLC and Ukrtower LLC, to the NJJ Capital investment company.
According to Turkcell, the amount of the transaction was supposed to be approximately $525 million. On December 29, 2023, AMCU received applications to issue permits for the transactions.
A number of participants on the telecommunications market believe that the partial arrest of shares in the companies being sold, as regarding charges against entrepreneur Mikhail Fridman, who is under Ukrainian sanctions and indirectly controls a minority stake in Turkcell, could be the obstacle thwarting the deal.