VimpelCom's Chief Executive Officer receives TMT Finance World 2016 Leadership Award

AMSTERDAM, Dec. 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- VimpelCom Ltd. ("VimpelCom") (NASDAQ: VIP), a leading global provider of telecommunications and digital services headquartered in Amsterdam and serving over 200 million customers, is proud to announce that Jean-Yves Charlier, its Chief Executive Officer, was named winner of the Leadership Award at Wednesday's TMT Finance World Awards 2016 in London.

The Leadership Award recognizes growth and value creation, rewarding CEOs who have made a difference to their organizations by growing their operations through acquisitions, effectiveness, and innovation.

Jean-Yves Charlier, Chief Executive Officer of VimpelCom, said: "I would like to thank TMT Finance for this prestigious award, which honors the hard work and dedication of our teams in completion of the joint venture with CK Hutchison in Italy. The joint venture marks a major milestone in Italy's digital transformation, bringing together Wind and 3 Italia to create a new, world-class operator which will make significant additional investments in Italy's digital development."

On 7 November 2016, VimpelCom and CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd. announced that they had completed the transaction to combine their respective businesses in Italy, Wind Telecomunicazioni and 3 Italia. The transaction is one of the largest M&A transactions in Italy since 2007, and marked a breakthrough for the telecommunications industry in securing approval from the European Commission. The combined business will create a strong new operator in Italy, driving competition in the market and serving over 31 million mobile customers and 2.7 million fixed line customers.

In July, VimpelCom completed the merger of Mobilink, its business in Pakistan, with Warid Telecom, strengthening its leadership position and creating a combined business that serves over 50 million customers.

VimpelCom has embarked on an ambitious transformation into a digital technology leader. Earlier this year it announced a major move to re-engineer its entire IT infrastructure to a single, global digital stack which will accelerate product and service development to meet the future digital needs of its customers. VimpelCom is also piloting a new digital customer engagement platform which aims to revolutionize how it interacts with its customers. It is globalizing and simplifying its Group-wide processes and has embedded a robust governance and compliance model across the organization that ensures the Group continues to operate to the highest international standards.

About VimpelCom
VimpelCom (NASDAQ: VIP) is an international communications and technology company, headquartered in Amsterdam, and driven by a vision to unlock new opportunities for customers as they navigate the digital world. Present in some of the world's most dynamic markets, VimpelCom provides more than 200 million customers with voice, fixed broadband, data and digital services. VimpelCom's heritage as a pioneer in technology is the driving force behind a major transformation focused on bringing the digital world to each and every customer. VimpelCom offers services to customers in 13 markets including Russia, Italy, Algeria, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Georgia and Laos. VimpelCom, whose licenses cover 10% of the world's population, operates under the "Beeline", "WIND", "Djezzy", "Mobilink", "Warid", "Kyivstar" and "banglalink" brands. Follow us on Twitter @VimpelCom, or visit our website @ http://www.vimpelcom.com.

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SOURCE VimpelCom Ltd.