Sonera Holding B. , a subsidiary of the Swedish telecommunications holding Telia Company, completed the acceptance of applications for the purchase of Turkish Turkcell shares. Based on the results of the collected bids, the price of one share was 11.6 Turkish lira.

According to the message of Telia, in total for 153.5 million shares of the Turkish company Sonera Holding will receive 1.78 billion Turkish liras or about $ 515 million at the current lira exchange rate.

After the transaction, the share of the Swedish company in Turkcell will decrease from 38% to 24%. The company will own this share indirectly, through the capital of Turkcell Holding.

"The sale of a direct package in Turkcell is in line with our company's strategy of focusing on business in the Nordic and Baltic countries. After completion of the deal, we will continue to be the largest shareholders of Turkcell, therefore we will do our best to exit the joint-stock conflict and restore normal corporate governance in Turkcell, "the press release quotes President and CEO Telia Johan Dennelind,.

In May 2017, Telia reported the completion of a pricelist for a package of 155 million shares of Turkcell. Then the price of one security was 11.45 Turkish lira, the value of the whole package - 1.775 billion Turkish liras ($ 513 million).

Turkcell is 51% owned by Turkcell Holding A. She, in turn, is 52.91% owned by Cukurova Telecom Holdings Ltd. (CTH), by 47.09% - by Telia. Alfa Telecom Turkey (structure of Alfa Group) owns 49% CTH.

Taking into account the stakes in Turkcell Holding and direct ownership, Telia owns 38% of the Turkish operator, Cukurova - 26.98%, Alfa - 13.2%.

For more than 10 years, Alfa Group has been seeking from Cukurova a 13.2% stake in Turkcell. This package Cukurova provided a pledge for a loan of $ 1.7 billion, taken from Alfa Group in 2005 and not repaid in time. In 2014, Cukurova was able to raise funds to repay the loan, but Alfa Group continued to seek the issuance of a stake in Turkcell instead of money, the payment date was. LetterOne (L1), the successor of Alfa Group, several times appealed to Cukurova with an offer to redeem a share. However, the Turkish holding rejected the offer and, for its part, filed a lawsuit with the London International Arbitration against L1 demanding the sale of its stake in Turkcell. The court dismissed the claim.

The joint-stock conflict blocks corporate processes in Turkcell, in particular, the owners traditionally can not agree on the payment of dividends and their amount. The Turkcell board of directors still does not have representatives of both parties - L1 and Cukurova.

Note that Turkcell Turkcell in 2015 concentrated 100% of the operator "Astelit", later renamed the lifecell.

lifecell is the third largest mobile phone operator in Ukraine. Its active subscriber base at the end of 2016 was about 9.2 million subscribers. Last year, lifecell received 928.3 million UAH of net profit, compared with 4.439 billion UAH net loss in 2015. The operator's revenue for 2016 amounted to UAH 4.838 billion.