Russian telecom major Rostelecom has secured shareholder approval for a plan involving spinning off its mobile assets and merging them into a joint venture with Tele2 Russia.
Shareholders late last year approved the spinoff of Rostelecom mobile assets with a book value of 19.5 billion rubles ($589.1 million) into subsidiary CJSC RT-Mobile.
Rostelecom is spinning off RT-Mobile as the first step towards the establishment of a mobile JV with Tele2 Russia. Once the process is complete, all of RT-Mobile's shares will be incorporated into the joint venture, T2 RTK Holding.
Rostelecom president Sergey Kalugin said combining mobile assets with Tele2 Russia's will create a company with a 16% subscriber share of the Russian mobile market.
“The new company will have a complete portfolio of frequencies and will operate commercially in 64 Russian regions,” he said. “We believe that we are in fact creating a national mobile operator that has all the opportunities to be competitive on a national scale, and have great growth potential.”