MOSCOW, May 11 (RIA Novosti) - The European Bank of Reconstruction and Development board is scheduled to consider granting the American media group News Corporation, owned by Rupert Murdock, a $130-million secured loan to expand its external advertising initiatives to Russia and other former Soviet republics, Vremya Novostei, a daily, reported.

According to an EBRD document, the loan will be used to take over some of the local players in several former Soviet republics, in order to establish an inter-regional network of external advertising. The company plans to borrow $223 million with the help of the EBRD for expansion in the region.

News Outdoor Russia, the Russian subsidiary of Murdock's media empire, has become the market's largest player during its first four years. Last year, its turnover was about $150 million, or about one third of the whole market. The company has more than 25,000 billboards and other forms of advertising media in 90 Russian cities. Its hold is especially strong in Nizhny Novgorod, where it has practically become a monopoly, and in Moscow, where it accounts for a quarter of the market.

The company decided to expand after a refusal to invest in risky media projects in the country, preferring to outstrip its Western European rivals on the promising markets of the former USSR. And the increasingly unbearable tax burden on small market operators made them seriously consider possibilities for selling out to big companies.

The company will spend the borrowed money on bolstering its positions in Russian cities with a population of at least one million and on emerging on the promising outdoor advertising market in Ukraine, said Andrei Beryozkin, general director of the ESPAR-Analitik marketing company.

"Evidently, they have set the goal of establishing a company capable of independently conducting an effective outdoor advertising campaign throughout the country," he said.