OREANDA-NEWS. October 04, 2010. Sistema JSFC (LSE: SSA), the largest diversified public financial corporation in Russia and the CIS, which invests in, and is a major shareholder of, companies operating in different industries, today announced the initial steps regarding the completion of the transactions described in the Memorandum of Understanding signed between OJSC Comstar-UTS, Sistema JSFC and OJSC Svyazinvest on November 23, 2009, which was disclosed previously, reported the press-centre of Sistema.

In particular:
OJSC Comstar-UTS and its subsidiary MGTS Finance S.A. transferred a 25% + 1 share in Svyazinvest to OJSC Rostelecom in return for a cash payment of RUB 26 billion, with OJSC Comstar-UTS using the proceeds to pay off its debt obligations to Sberbank ahead of schedule.

CJSC Sistema-Inventure, a subsidiary of Sistema JSFC, made a cash payment of RUB 450 million to OJSC Svyazinvest in connection with the agreement to exchange shares in OJSC MGTS for shares in CJSC Sky Link.

The following transactions remain to be completed:
OJSC Svyazinvest’s transfer of 28% of ordinary shares in OJSC MGTS (23.3% of the share capital of MGTS) to CJSC Sistema-Inventure, a subsidiary of Sistema in exchange for Sistema-Inventure’s transfer of 50% of ordinary shares in CJSC Sky Link (which combined with the indirect ownership effectively totals 100% of the Sky Link’s share capital).

JSFC Sistema’s sale of CJSC Sky Link’s shareholder debt and debt of certain subsidiaries of Sky Link to subsidiaries of OJSC Svyazinvest.

Because all of the transactions described in the Memorandum of Understanding are inter-linked, the overall deal cannot be considered fully completed until all of the transactions are closed.