OREANDA-NEWS. On June 08, 2007  “COMSTAR – United TeleSystems” JSC (“Comstar”) (LSE: CMST) announced that the Board of Directors (the “Board”) has approved a 5-year ruble-denominated credit facility of RUR 26 billion (approximately US$ 1 billion) at a fixed rate of 7.6% with Savings Bank of the Russian Federation (Sberbank), reported the press-centre of  COMSTAR.

The collateral used to secure the credit facility will consist of a 17.3% stake (3,378,173,750 shares) in Telecommunication Investment Joint Stock Company (Svyazinvest) owned by Comstar and a 7.7% stake (1,501,410,556 shares) in Svyazinvest owned by MGTS Finance S.A.

Nikolay Tokarev, Chief Financial Officer of Comstar, commented: “This is a landmark deal in the history of our capital markets transactions. We are pleased to have Sberbank, the largest universal bank in Russia, providing the financing to support the future growth of our business. We intend to use the credit line to finance our spending on telecommunications network development, including the refinancing of existing loans, such as the repayment of a US$ 675 million six month loan from ABN AMRO and Morgan Stanley, which we received in December 2006.”