OREANDA-NEWS The fact that a group of Russian top managers of VimpelCom (Beeline brand), headed by CEO Alexander Torbakhov, closed a deal to buy the company from the Dutch VEON, is stated in a message from the companies received by RBC. It notes that as part of the transaction, VimpelCom bought more than 96% of VEON bonds in Russia, including more than 99.6% of all the group's bonds accounted for in the National Settlement Depository (NSD). Repurchase "on uniform and economically equal terms for each bond issue". No additional external financing was attracted for the transaction, a source close to the company told RBC.

The message emphasizes that "the terms of the transaction do not imply the possibility of repurchase and fix the final exit of the company from the VEON group." At the same time, VimpelCom noted that the level of debt burden following the transaction will be "comfortable": by the end of the third quarter, the ratio of net debt to EBITDA will not exceed 2.9x, and at the time of the transaction — no more than 2.6x.

VEON announced the sale of the Russian business in the fall of 2022. Initially, it was assumed that the transaction would be closed no later than June 1, 2023, but the deadline had to be postponed due to the requirement of the Russian government commission on foreign Investment to buy VEON bonds from at least 90% of Russian holders. The cost of the entire VimpelCom was estimated at 370 billion rubles, but the bulk of this amount was to be repaid by writing off VEON's debt to a Russian company. The remaining 130 billion rubles. VimpelCom was to spend on the redemption of VEON bonds from Russian holders, after which VEON was to become a formal "debtor" of VimpelCom and in exchange for the debt to forgive the amount of 130 billion rubles. by the deal. In mid-September, the companies announced that they planned to complete all the formalities for the transaction by October 13.

Aspring Capital investment bank acted as financial advisor to VEON Holding on the transaction, legal consultants were: on the part of VEON Holding — ALRUD law firm, on the part of buyers — LEVEL Legal Services law firm. Alor Broker (ALOR + LLC) acted as a financial consultant and broker in the process of repurchasing Eurobonds of VEON Holdings B.V..

At the beginning of 2023, VEON had eight Eurobond issues in circulation. In its materials, the company reported that in all issues of its bonds maturing until 2027, the share of Russian holders accounts for 50%.

In February of this year, Alor Broker offered Russian holders of one of the dollar issues of VEON bonds to redeem them at a price of 92.82% of face value or exchange them for VimpelCom exchange bonds. Later, Alor Broker published a new offer for the redemption or exchange of securities to holders of all Eurobond issues, the rights to which are accounted for by Russian depositories (the conditions assumed a discount of 79.57–92.71%, depending on the issue), and in August repeated the offer. Two RBC sources close to the buyout process reported that the vast majority of bondholders agreed to exchange them for VimpelCom bonds.