OREANDA-NEWS. July 08, 2010. The shareholders of all seven regional telecommunications operators and Rostelecom have voted for the reorganization in the form of a merger between RTOs and Rostelecom.

The last of Svyazinvest’s subsidiaries whose shareholders gave their approval to this decision was Far East Telecom. 

The annual general shareholders meeting of Far East Telecom voted with a majority of 85% approve a merger of the Company with Rostelecom.  During the month of June, similar resolutions were passed by the annual general shareholders meetings of Sibirtelecom, VolgaTelecom, Uralsvyazinform, UTK, North-West Telecom and Center Telecom.  The shareholders of Rostelecom voted on June 26 to approve a merger between the national operator and seven RTOs, with over 97% of shareholders voting in favor of the merger.  As a result, an important step in the reorganization of the Svyazinvest Group of companies has been completed – obtaining corporate approvals. 

Commenting on this pivotal event for the Russian telecommunications market, the general director of Svyazinvest Evgeny Yurchenko has the following to say: “We are pleased to see that the shareholders of all companies have unanimously voted to support the merger of RTOs on the basis of Rostelecom. 

The main thing is that the merger process is supported not only by the state, our key shareholder, but also by the minority shareholders of our companies.  Such tremendous backing points undeniably to the fact that shareholders believe in the merged company’s strong outlook.  At the end of the reorganization the merged Rostelecom will turn into a promising new blue chip, while its shares will be listed in all the leading indices of the RTS and MICEX. 

Now that the required corporate approvals have been received, the next stage of the reorganization can move forward, which involves business integration between RTOs and Rostelecom and mapping out the merged company’s strategy in terms of corporate governance, accounting policy, financial management, technical policy, marketing and M&A.