OREANDA-NEWS. On April 23, 2007 "COMSTAR - United TeleSystems" announced the acquisition of a 100% stake in Golden Line, a wholly owned subsidiary of Comstar Direct, for a total cash consideration of US$10,2 million from Comstar Direct. The transaction was approved by the Board of Directors on April 19, 2007, reported the press-centre of  COMSTAR.

Golden Line is a provider of dedicated leased access lines in Moscow to corporate clients using its fiber optic network and MGTS' switches. The company offers transportation backbone inclusive of 48 core network nodes for dedicated services to private networks of corporate users. Golden Line leases circuits to over 100 telecommunication providers and to carriers in order to connect remote subscribers. The company was established in 1993 as a 50/50 joint venture between Alcatel (previously, Newbridge Networks) and MGTS. In September 2002, Sistema acquired a 50% stake from Alcatel. In November 2002, 100% stake in Golden Line was transferred to Comstar Direct (previously, MTU-Intel).

Eric Franke, President and Chief Executive Officer of Comstar UTS, commented: "The acquisition of a 100% stake in Golden Line is in line with our previously stated intention to streamline our operations into an integrated combined telecommunications company. We see a lot of synergies between Golden Line and Comstar UTS in Moscow as they both provide a full suite of telecom solutions to our corporate clients and operators and have the same business model. As we have stated previously, Golden Line will be integrated into our Group operations in 2007".

Nikolay Tokarev, Chief Financial Officer of Comstar UTS, added: "We expect the full consolidation of Golden Line in Comstar UTS' results to have a positive impact on the Group's bottom line as a result of the elimination of a minority interest".