Bloomberg via The Moscow Times 5 April 2012
HELSINKI — Telenor increased its stake in Russia’s VimpelCom to 35.7 percent by buying shares on which it had a swap agreement.
Telenor paid $715 million to acquire the 65 million depositary receipts from JPMorgan Chase, the Fornebu, Norway-based company said in a statement Wednesday. Telenor previously owned a 31.7 percent stake in Russia’s second-largest wireless carrier by subscribers.
The Norwegian phone company bought a block of shares from Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris in February after the stake declined because of the Russian company’s merger with Sawiris’ Wind Telecom. The deal created the world’s sixth-largest wireless carrier by subscribers.