Alfa Group’s latest deal puts it at the top of the Russian mobile industry after more than five years of bruising corporate battles that saw it take on Scandinavian telecoms, a Turkish billionaire and even the Russian telecoms minister.

In court cases that stretched from New York, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands to Siberia and Ukraine, oligarch Mikhail Fridman’s group fought “extraordinary hardball”, according to one industry insider, standoffs that in some cases have raised concerns about Russia’s investment climate.