The Antimonopoly Committee (AMCU) has found grounds for prohibiting the acquisition of control by DVL Telecom, which is part of the investment company NJJ Capital of the French billionaire Xavier Niel, of the lifecell mobile operator of (formerly Astelit).
This is stated in the message of the AMCU, Ukrainian News Agency reports.
According to the report, the committee considered statements regarding the acquisition of control by DVL Telecom over lifecell LLC, Global Bilgi LLC and Ukrtower LLC (lifecell Group).
In particular, during the consideration of applications for the acquisition of control by DVL Telecom over lifecell and Ukrtower, the committee found grounds for banning these concentrations.
"Given that concentrations in the form of acquisition by DVL Telecom of control over lifecell, Ukrtower and Global Bilgi form a single transaction and will occur in accordance with one contract of sale, separate permission to DVL Telecom to acquire control over Global Bilgi LLC cannot also be granted by the committee. Also, during the consideration of applications for the acquisition by DVL Telecom of control over the lifecell group, it became necessary to check the relations of the concentration participants, in particular the lifecell group and the Turkcell group, with a person to whom personal special economic and other restrictive measures (sanctions) were applied by the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine," the statement said.
According to the report, taking into account the above, on March 7, the committee began consideration of concentration cases in the form of DVL Telecom acquiring control over limited liability companies lifecell, Global Bilgi and Ukrtower.
Simultaneously with the commencement of these concentration cases, the committee began to consider a case on concerted actions that are directly related to the implementation of these concentrations.
As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, the AMCU allowed DVL Telecom, which is part of Xavier Niel’s NJJ Capital, to buy Datagroup-Volia (Kyiv), a national fixed-line operator and digital services.
In January, Xavier Niel said that his investment company NJJ Capital agreed to pay USD 500 million for the Ukrainian divisions of Turkcell, in particular for the lifecell mobile operator.
In October 2023, a court has seized all corporate rights in Ukraine that belonged to sanctioned russian oligarchs Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and Andrei Kosogov.
In particular, the court arrested 47.85% of shares of PrJSC Kyivstar and 19.8% of the authorized capital of the lifecell mobile operator.
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