In December, Turkcell (the parent company of lifecell) announced the sale of Ukrainian assets to French NJJ Capital — the deal is valued at $525 million, but cannot be closed within three months due to seizure of 19.8% of corporate rights in lifecell (the reason is that Turkcell’s indirect shareholders include sanctioned Russian businessman Mikhail Fridman and his partners).
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) rejected the first application in early January, and returned the second on March 7, the same day lifecell filed an appeal.
«I am not questioning the court’s decision itself – I am a lawyer too. However, how did they decide that 19.8% of our shares would be frozen because Friedman’s company indirectly owns 19.8% of Turkcell? I cannot solve this equation purely from a mathematical point of view, because the unseized 80% of lifecell still indirectly owns 19.8% of Friedman’s company», — says in Forbes interview Ismet Yazıcı, CEO of lifecell.
At the same time, he added that there is hope that the deal will be closed in April-September 2024, and in an optimistic scenario — at the end of March.
«Closing the deal at the end of the year — a rather pessimistic scenario. The company is actually in limbo, and people are working under a lot of pressure. Of course, the top management will do everything to motivate the team».
A few days after the announcement of the deal, Yazygy announced that he would resign — now he says that he was ready to resign a year ago, but did not dare to do so because of the war:
«My new position has already been determined. I don’t really want to work with the new owners. After preliminary discussions, it turned out that there is no common vision of the future development strategy and conditions».
In addition to lifecell NJJ acquires Datagroup-Volia (the deal is valued at more than $100 million), so a potential merger is possible:
«The French call this company DVL – «Datagroup», Volia, lifecell. In this equation, lifecell is the strongest company in terms of revenue, infrastructure and streamlined processes. lifecell can indeed become a common denominator for the merged company. But the final decision is up to the buyers. As far as I understand, they are considering another option. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why I don’t want to stay in the company after the deal is closed,» says Yazyji.