Switzerland’s Swisscom and Tamedia have agreed to take over marketing and media sales company PubliGroupe’s local online directories and search businesses together, incorporating them into a new joint venture.
The incumbent telco and media group had…
Switzerland’s Swisscom and Tamedia have agreed to take over marketing and media sales company PubliGroupe’s local online directories and search businesses together, incorporating them into a new joint venture.
The incumbent telco and media group had made rival takeover bids for PubliGroupe, with the former’s SFr200 (US$224) per share offer topping Tamedia’s SFr150 (US$168) per share, later increased to SFr190 (US$213).
Tamedia has agreed with Swisscom not to increase its offer further and, if the takeover offer is successful, to sell its PubliGroupe shares to Swisscom.
Swisscom would own 69% of the joint subsidiary and consolidate the company, while Tamedia would own the remaining 31%.
Swisscom’s main aim with the PubliGroupe takeover is to take full control of local.ch and search.ch. The telco currently owns 50% of the local.ch group, which includes the online directories platform, while PubliGroupe owns the rest. Tamedia owns 75% of search.ch, which provides a phone directory and interactive map as well as search and other services, while the rest belongs to Swiss Post.
Swisscom and Tamedia said local.ch and search.ch would continue as independent offerings in the market, reaching a combined 4.8 million internet users in Switzerland each month. The companies aim to make the businesses “a strong Swiss alternative to Google”.
Swisscom intends to publish its offer prospectus by 12 June. As previously announced, the telco intends to sell PubliGroup’s minority shareholdings in several media companies if the takeover succeeds.
The partnership between Swisscom and Tamedia and PubliGroupe takeover are subject to the approval of the Federal Competition Commission.
At the time of writing, PubliGroupe’s shares were trading at SFr199.60 (US$222) on the SIX Swiss Exchange, valuing the company at SFr467m (US$519m).
