SPF wants to privatize Ukrtelecom in December

The State Property Fund is planning to put the government’s 67.79% stake in Ukrtelecom (UTLM) on the privatization schedule for December 2009, Interfax reported yesterday. Yegor Samusenko: There has been talk of privatizing Ukrtelecom for 10 years, and the SPF has gone so far as to list it in its privatization schedule several times. However, we do not see any new reasons why this time will be successful (in fact control over the state’s stake was recently transferred from the SPF to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications – creating one more legal obstacle). Thus, we doubt that Ukrtelecom will be privatized in 2009 and don’t expect any impact from this news on the stock.