Years after beginning the process, Norwegian telco group Telenor has flogged its remaining Veon shares.

Scott Bicheno

November 22, 2019

1 Min Read
telenor office logo

Years after beginning the process, Norwegian telco group Telenor has flogged its remaining Veon shares.

“Telenor has today sold its remaining 157 million shares in Veon,” said a Telenor filing. “The total consideration amounts to USD 362 million (around NOK 3.3 billion), with cash effect in the fourth quarter of 2019. This transaction is in line with the previously communicated strategy and concludes the final sell-down in Veon.”

The previous communication was over four years ago and it’s not clear what took it so long. Telenor has been offloading chunks of Veon, which does much of its business in Russia, at regular intervals ever since. Telenor has been in the process of retreating from its more exotic ventures for a while, having apparently decided it’s more comfortable with the relative stability of the Nordics.

So much so, in fact, that it has now formed its operations in that region into a cluster, no less. At the start of the month it announced that Jukka Leinonen, CEO of DNA Finland, which is owned by Telenor, would be in charge of said cluster. That means he’s now Chair of Telenor Sweden and Telenor Denmark too.

“I am honoured to head the new Nordic cluster and look forward to further developing Telenor Group’s position in the region through strengthened collaboration between the Nordic Telenor companies,” said Leinonen. I see great potential for value creation, for instance better roaming for customers, developing the B2B segment in the cluster, 5G and IoT.”

About the Author(s)

Scott Bicheno

As the Editorial Director of Telecoms.com, Scott oversees all editorial activity on the site and also manages the Telecoms.com Intelligence arm, which focuses on analysis and bespoke content.
Scott has been covering the mobile phone and broader technology industries for over ten years. Prior to Telecoms.com Scott was the primary smartphone specialist at industry analyst Strategy Analytics’. Before that Scott was a technology journalist, covering the PC and telecoms sectors from a business perspective.
Follow him @scottbicheno

You May Also Like