Companies@UA: База компаний Украины

Moscow, January 22 (Interfax) - Shareholders in Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) will elect new members to the board of directors at an extraordinary meeting on February 18.

Seven candidates have been nominated to the seven-member board.

For the first time Vitaly Savelyev, the first vice president for telecommunications development at AFK Sistema, the parent company of MTS, has been nominated to the board. He will replace First Vice President for Strategy and Development Anton Abugov.

Savelyev arrived at Sistema last fall. He earlier worked as deputy minister of Economic Development and Trade, leaving the post soon after the resignation of German Gref, the long-time head of that ministry.

The remaining six candidates are current board members. They include Sistema senior vice presidents Sergei Drozdov and Alexei Buyanov, MTS President Leonid Melamed, his advisor Tatyana Yevtushenkova, and two independent directors: member of the board of directors of Keynote Systems, Safeway, Sirf Technology and Union Bank of California Mohanbir Gyani and the president of Kungur Oilfield Equipment & Services Paul Ostling.

Shareholders will also vote on the merger of the company with four subsidiaries: Volgograd Mobile, Astrakhan Mobile, Mar Mobile GSM (Marii-el) and Primtelefon (Primorye).

MTS is the largest mobile communications operator in the CIS. Together with subsidiaries the company serves over 80 million subscribers in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Turkmenistan.

Sistema owns 52.8% of MTS shares. Another 46.7% circulate on the New York Stock Exchange, European OTC markets and MICEX. Other shareholders own 0.5%.