Dutch KPN Telecom has announced that it will sell its stake in Ukraine’s largest mobile phone operator, Ukrainian Mobile Communications (UMC), but another of the mobile phone firm’s foreign shareholders is likely to snap up KPN’s shares.
UMC was on a list of holdings KPN made public March 26. It plans to sell the holdings to help cut its massive debt.
Bram Oudshoorn, a spokesman for the Dutch firm, confirmed on March 27 the company’s holding in UMC landed on the list. KPN owns a 16.3 percent stake in the communications company.
Oudshoorn said negotiations on the sale are underway but wouldn’t elaborate. Sources close to negotiations told the Post another shareholder in UMC, Deutsche Telekom AG, is interested in KPN’s stake. KPN’s Oudshoorn would neither confirm nor deny that information.
KPN, Deutsche Telekom and TeleDenmark each hold a 16.3 percent stake in the UMC joint venture, with the remainder held by Ukraine’s state phone monopoly Ukrtelecom. If Deutsche Telekom goes ahead and acquires KPN’s stake in UMC, it would bring the German company’s holding in the joint venture up to 32.6 percent.
KPN said it was planning to divest its shares in at least 15 other companies to reduce a debt totaling 21.9 billion euros. KPN, which has the lowest credit rating of Europe’s former telecom monopolies, said it expected to raise 5 billion euros from the sales, with at least a fifth of that amount arriving in the next six months.
