Telenor says enough is enough with troubled Veon

Most Norwegians we’ve met to date have been nice, relatively laid back people, but the execs at Telenor have seemingly been pushed to breaking point, resulting in the divestment of Veon.

It’s been in the works for a while, and it would appear Telenor has finally gotten sick of dealing with Veon. There has been ‘debate’ over the future strategic direction of the company, but it won’t be long before the Norwegians finally ditch their final 19.7% stake in Veon.

Telenor has announced it has begun an offering of 90 million Veon shares, roughly a 5.1% stake in the telco, priced at $4.15, with the offering expected to close on September 25. This will leave Telenor holding onto 14.6% of Veon, though plans are to transfer this stake to an exchangeable bond. Telenor will be able to clean its hands of any association.

This should come as little surprise considering the saga which played out in Uzbekistan back in years gone, when the business was known as Vimpelcom. Back in 2015, Telenor announced plans to divest its stake in the business, citing ‘challenging’ conditions. Apparently paying hundreds of millions of dollars to firms controlled by Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov for a leg-up in the country, is a no-no in Oslo.

And while many might view this as an admirable move by a telco wanted to keep its hands clean, let’s not forget Telenor was not completely absent of wrong-doing. A seconded Telenor employee raised concerns of corruption back in 2011, but this news didn’t make it to the CEO until March 2014, and then onto the board in December later that year. From there the memo was lost until October 2015 when it made its way to the Norwegian government, the majority shareholder of Telenor. Negligence or incompetence – we’ll let you decide, but neither should be present.

Telenor is on the verge of getting rid of the headache, which also blamed Uzbekistan for a recent profit warning, and it will receive a nice little $365 million boost in cash in the first instance. Seems a bit backward to be rewarding the telco when you look at the saga from angles, but hey-ho.