OREANDA-NEWS. February 24, 2012. Joint-Stock Commercial Bank Moscow Bank for Reconstruction and Development (“OJSC MBRD” or the “Bank”), one of the top 30 largest Russian banks by assets, announces that it has changed its name to OJSC MTS Bank (“MTS Bank”) and has chosen the MTS brand name as the basis for its further development. The MTS brand belongs to OJSC Mobile TeleSystems (“MTS”; NYSE: MBT), the leading telecommunications provider in Russia and the CIS.

Last year, the Bank’s Board of Directors approved a decision to change the Bank’s name and adopted a new development strategy. On February 16, 2012, the Bank received the following documents from the Central Bank of the Russian Federation: registered amendments to the Bank’s Charter incorporating its new name; a general licence; and a certificate of registration in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. This was therefore the point at which MTS Bank officially received its new name.

Renaming the Bank is the first step in rebranding, which provides new opportunities to facilitate the creation of a large universal bank on a national scale with a developed retail network and an extensive customer base. The Bank’s development strategy through 2016 aims at growing the Bank’s loan portfolio and extending its product line for individual customers, primarily through the retail network of the mobile operator, whose brand name provided the basis for the Bank’s name. In turn, MTS will be able to provide its customers with solutions based on the integration of mobile telecommunications and banking, such as mobile commerce, the development of NFC-based contactless payments, and a wide range of banking services in its retail outlets.

Andrey Shlyakhovoy, Chairman of the Management Board of MTS Bank, commented: “The MTS brand is without doubt one of the strongest and the most popular brands in Russia. Our Bank has the ambitious aim of becoming one of the largest universal banks in the country in the coming years. By using the MTS brand in the financial sector, MTS Bank aims to work very closely with its customers, offering them innovative and modern banking products and services.”

Vasyl Latsanych, MTS Vice President for Marketing, added: “As an innovative leader in the Russian market, MTS sets the trends. Based on the partnership agreement to use the MTS brand, we have been the first to initiate a mobile banking project, which will offer more than 70 million MTS subscribers in Russia unique benefits, resulting from a synergy between the mobile telecommunications and banking segments, as well as new convergent products and exclusive channels of communication and services. This combination of a mobile operator’s and a bank’s capabilities reflects the global trend of technological development, where subscribers actively use their mobile phones as a payment instrument and are willing to use new services in this area.”

In 2011, the MTS brand was for the fourth year in a row ranked as the most valuable Russian brand among BRANDZ™ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands, a ranking published by the Financial Times and Millward Brown Optimor, a leading global market research and consulting firm.