MOSCOW. Feb 12 (Interfax) - Voentelecom, a telecommunications operator owned by Russia's Defense Ministry, has replaced CEO Nikolai Tamodin with Alexander Davydov, the former head of the Masshtab Research Institute in St. Petersburg, which does research in telecoms, information security and automation.
Tamodin's contract expired in January 2013, and on Monday Voentelecom's board of directors confirmed Davydov as the new CEO, the company said in a press release. Tamodin had headed Voentelecom since January 2010.
Voentelecom said that it has significantly improved its financial performance since 2009, when revenue amounted to 321 million rubles. The company's revenue surged 86% to 14.3 billion rubles in 2012 from 7.7 billion rubles in 2011, and net profit grew 19.4% to 750 million rubles from 628 million rubles, according to preliminary estimates.
The company now serves about 300,000 pieces of communications and automation equipment at more than 1,500 Defense Ministry sites, provides integration and telecom services to military agencies and Defense Ministry companies, and supports the operation of computer classes at 73 military post secondary institutions. Voentelecom also maintains more than 40,000 km of cable lines throughout Russia and provides communications services such as IP telephony and Internet access, among others, to 15,000 homes of military service personnel.
Voentelecom elected a new board of directors at an extraordinary general meeting on Monday. The new board includes Alexander Gorshkolepov and Alexander Konovalov of the Defense Ministry's property relations department; Sergei Kulikov, chief of staff for the CEO of state corporation Rostech; Sergei Lvov, department director at OJSC Oboronservis; Georgy Forsov, adviser to the deputy defense minister; Alexander Zhalezov, manager in the Defense Ministry's property relations department; and Alexander Yakunin, director of the radio electronics industry at the Industry and Trade Ministry. Lvov was named chairman of the board.
OJSC Voentelecom was founded on June 4, 2009 by decree of the Russian defense minister with the restructuring of federal state company Voentelecom. The company has 27 branches, including a design institute and nine repair plants.
Remvooruzheniye, a company that is wholly owned by the Defense Ministry, owns 97.45% of shares on Voentelecom. According to the Federal Statistics Service, Defense Ministry institutions hold all of Voentelecom's capital.
Voentelecom owns a stake of 25% plus one share in Osnova Telecom, the remaining shares in which are owned by Icominvest, a company owned by Vitaly Yusufov, the son of former Russian energy minister Igor Yusufov.
It was reported last week that Osnova Telecom's shareholders might disagree on the development of the company. Business daily Vedomosti reported that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu is proposing to take away Osnova Telecom's national LTE frequencies in the bandwidth of 2.3-2.4 GHz and abandon plans to build a separate 4G mobile network for the ministry. Icominvest's management asserted that Osnova Telecom would develop as an independent company and does not intend to give back its frequency resources.