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Shareholders of Rubicon Wireless Communication — the joint-stock company that operates Uzbekistan’s mobile network under the Perfectum brand — have unanimously approved the sale of a Tashkent real-estate complex and more than two thousand items of company equipment to businessman Oybek Tursunov for a combined 98.4 billion soums, inclusive of value-added tax.
The decision was taken at an extraordinary general meeting on 16 October and formalised in a protocol dated 21 October. The bulk of the sum — 65.97 billion soums — covers a property at 21 Taras Shevchenko Street in Tashkent’s Mirabad district, including its land plot. The site spans 7,300 square metres and contains four buildings with a total floor area of roughly 10,500 square metres, of which approximately 8,700 square metres is usable space across 57 rooms, including 47 offices. The remaining 32.4 billion soums is allocated to the more than two thousand units of fixed assets, listed in an annex to the shareholders’ resolution. The protocol states the combined property value but does not separately itemise the land and buildings or disclose the valuation methodology.
A Parallel Track to the VEON Acquisition
The asset sale to Tursunov is being structured as a transaction entirely separate from the concurrent acquisition of Perfectum itself. The international telecoms group VEON, which already operates in Uzbekistan through Beeline, has agreed to purchase 100 percent of Rubicon Wireless Communication’s shares, with all current shareholders acting as sellers and VEON UZB Holding Ltd as the buyer. Share transfer applications are to be submitted to the over-the-counter trading system of the Uzbek Republican Stock Exchange on a date specified in the purchase agreement.
By stripping out the real estate and fixed assets before the share transfer completes, the sellers are effectively separating the physical infrastructure from the operating business that VEON is buying. The published documents set out the terms of both transactions but do not provide a full picture of the company’s overall asset valuation.
In preparation for the ownership change, shareholders also approved a new supervisory board for Rubicon Wireless Communication, comprising five executives from Unitel — the entity that runs Beeline in Uzbekistan. Their mandates will begin on the date the share-transfer applications are filed and will run for three years.
Dissenting Shareholders and Share Buyback Rights
The protocol notes that any shareholder who voted against the property sale, or who was absent for valid reasons, has 30 days to demand that the company repurchase all or part of their shares. The supervisory board has recommended a buyback price of one thousand soums per ordinary share, though the document provides no detailed justification or calculation method for that figure.
Uzbekistan’s Competition Committee had previously given conditional approval for VEON’s acquisition of Perfectum, requiring the operator to maintain independent operations for at least three years after the deal closes.