BDK Advokati advised Société Générale, as agent, and a syndicate of commercial bank lenders in connection with a €3.05 billion credit facility provided to a subsidiary of PPF Group for the acquisition of, among other assets, 100 percent interests in Telenor d.o.o. Beograd (Serbia) and Telenor d.o.o. Podgorica (Montenegro). Allen and Overy acted as the lead counsel on this transaction while Boyanov and Co. provided legal counselling on the local aspects of the transaction.
Telenor has made a strategic decision to sell its business in Eastern Europe, including Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro where it services more than 9 million customers and generates 9 percent of the group’s total revenue and 8 percent of group’s total profit. The exit from the Eastern Europe follows Telenor’s commitment to focus on Scandinavian and the fast-growing Asian markets where the company is already present in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, Thailand and Malaysia.
The new owner of Telenor’s business in East Europe is PPF Group, one of the biggest investment funds in the Central and Eastern Europe. PPF Group has previously acquired O2’s mobile business in Slovakia and the Czech telecoms infrastructure business Cetin.
The BDK Advokati team included managing partner Tijana Kojović, senior associates Dragoljub Sretenović and Tomislav Popović and consultant Pablo Pérez Laya. Partner Luka Popović provided Montenegrin law advice.
