Veon Ltd., the owner of Ukraine’s largest mobile operator Kyivstar, signed a memorandum of understanding with the American investment company Cohen Circle. The companies plan to merge their businesses to indirectly list Kyivstar’s shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the US.
Kyivstar CEO Oleksandr Komarov announced the news in a Facebook post.
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Veon will continue to hold a majority stake in the company that will be listed on the stock exchange, planning an IPO (initial public offering), a Kyivstar press release says.
The details of the future deal are few, however, more information is expected to be disclosed after the merger’s final agreement is signed, which is anticipated by the second quarter of 2025.
What’s known for now is that VEON plans a spring cleaning before setting up the IPO.
Prior to the merger, Veon plans to reorganize Veon Holdings, aiming to complete the reorganization through a demerger. After this, Veon Holdings, remaining registered in the Netherlands, will own only Kyivstar and its subsidiaries, along with certain other specific assets and liabilities.
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Veon will move the rest of its assets to a newly created company that will own Veon’s other main operating subsidiaries and assets.
The intention of Kyivstar’s IPO was first announced in mid-November 2024.
For some time, Kyivstar suffered from its Russian connections – with part of VEON’s shares belonging to Russian businessmen Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and Andrey Kosogov.
While Kyivstar is wholly owned by Veon, and the holding’s shares are listed on Nasdaq and Euronext, 47.9% of Veon’s shares were owned by LetterOne, with Fridman holding a 37.86% stake and Kosogov 47.23%.
This ownership structure caused problems between Kyivstar and Ukraine’s law enforcement – hunting for Russian assets in Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion, begun Feb. 24, 2022.
Fridman and his business partners Petr Aven, Alexei Kuzmichov, and German Khan have been under EU sanctions for alleged ties to the Putin administration since Feb. 28, 2022.
Ukraine imposed sanctions on them in the fall of 2022, grounding on which Ukraine’s State Security Service arrested Kyivstar’s corporate rights in Ukraine.
Kyivstar CEO Komarov has stated that Fridman has no influence on the company and that it is firmly pro-Ukrainian.
On Nov. 29, the Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv stopped the arrest of 47.85% of the corporate rights of the Dutch company Veon in Kyivstar and 100% of the corporate rights in its other Ukrainian subsidiaries, Forbes Ukraine wrote.
Kyivstar plans to attract new international investors through the IPO.
“This will make us one of the first Ukrainian companies, and certainly the first during the war, in the field of electronic communications to be represented on American stock exchanges. It will also attract new international investors,” Komarov wrote.
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