Appleby has acted as British Virgin Islands (“BVI”) counsel to Garsdale Services Investment Limited (“Garsdale”) and USM Advisors in connection with the recent acquisition by MegaFon of its indirect 50% stake in Euroset, Russia’s largest mobile phone retailer.
The transaction saw Lefbord Investments Limited (“Lefbord”), a Cypriot company, acquire the 50% stake in Euroset. Lefbord is jointly owned by MegaFon (Russia’s second largest mobile phone operator) and Garsdale, the BVI holding vehicle owned by the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, and MegaFon’s majority shareholder.
Under the deal, Vimplecom, Russia’s third largest mobile operator, also acquired a 0.1% stake in Euroset, taking its overall shareholding in the company to 50%.
The Appleby team was lead by Nick Verardi, Practice Group Head for the Corporate & Commercial department in Appleby’s Isle of Man office, together with Senior Associate, Kyle Sutherland who provided the necessary BVI legal advice to Garsdale and USM Advisors on the transaction. The Moscow office of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP took the lead role in advising Garsdale.
Nick Verardi commented: “This transaction is evidence of the increasing need for many of our clients to have access to BVI legal services in a time zone convenient to their global operations.”
He continued, “We work closely with our colleagues in our BVI office to provide credible BVI legal advice across time zones, another demonstration of our ‘one firm’ approach for the overall benefit of our clients.”
