Commenting on the event, Alexander Izosimov, Chief Executive Officer of VimpelCom, said “We are delighted to be in New York to celebrate our 10th anniversary on the New York Stock Exchange.” He continued, “Since our founding, we have built our business based upon principles of transparency and sound corporate governance. By current standards, the size of our IPO was small, slightly more than $100 million – but the impact was enormous. By being the first to list on the NYSE in 1996, we set the stage for what has followed over the last decade – the increased presence of Russian companies in the international markets and the explosive growth of Russian industry.”

To mark the occasion, VimpelCom is holding a meeting of its board of directors in New York on November 14 and a series of meetings and ceremonies on November 15. This will include ringing the bell for the opening of trading at the NYSE. The bell ringing ceremony will take place at 9:30am EST and can be viewed at the URL address https://www.vimpelcom.com.

In honor of the date of the first listing of a Russian company on the NYSE, the Russian Association of Investor Relations Professionals has decided that it will celebrate an IR professional holiday annually on November 15.

VimpelCom is a leading international provider of mobile telecommunications services in Russia and Kazakhstan, with recently acquired operators in Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia. The VimpelCom Group’s license portfolio covers approximately 237 million people. Geographically it covers 78 regions in Russia (with 136.5 million people, representing 94% of Russia’s population) as well as the entire territories of Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia.