Agency and newspaper reports – denied by all the parties involved - have Russian companies negotiating partnership/joint venture deals with German incumbent Deutsche Telekom and mobile giant Vodafone. Supposedly keen to swap control of its telecommunications businesses – the jewel in the crown of which is Mobile TeleSystems – for a 10% to 20 % stake in Telekom is Russian conglomerate AFK Sistema. Supposedly endeavouring to negotiate a stake of up to 20% in Vodafone is second conglomerate Alfa.

If any of this turns out to have any basis in reality, or even possibility, Telekom and Vodafone might want to remind themselves of how another Russian/Western European deal panned out – that between Telenor and Alfa/Altimo/VimpelCom (interested readers can follow the click-throughs from here). Actually, that deal is still panning out/unravelling. In the latest development VimpelCom yesterday announced that the Federal Arbitration Court of the Moscow District has ruled in its favour in the matter of one of the lawsuits filed by Telenor East Invest AS. In that action Telenor was seeking to invalidate VimpelCom’s decision to purchase Ukrainian Radio Systems (URS).

We say: caveat emptor.
John Williamson