Anchorage Capital Group has bought a 25% stake in Irish incumbent Eircom from fellow New York private equity firm Blackstone, two people familiar with the matter have confirmed to TelecomFinance. The deal makes Anchorage Eircom’s largest…
Anchorage Capital Group has bought a 25% stake in Irish incumbent Eircom from fellow New York private equity firm Blackstone, two people familiar with the matter have confirmed to TelecomFinance. The deal makes Anchorage Eircom’s largest shareholder.
The development comes a day after Eircom disclosed that it had recently knocked back a €3.3bn (US$3.67bn) non-binding takeover proposal.
“While the bidder was very credible, the board believed that, with the business reaching an inflection point, the indicated price range undervalued the group,” Eircom said in a statement to the Irish Stock Exchange.
Subsequently Blackstone sold most of its 30% stake to Anchorage, retaining just 5% of the operator’s shares.
Anchorage was already invested in privately-held Eircom and according to an annual report from June 2014 held just over 8% of the operator.
Blackstone became Eircom’s largest shareholder in 2012. It had previously held bonds in the Dublin-based group but took an ownership stake through a restructuring process.
Last September Eircom shelved plans for an initial public offering that could have raised as much as €1bn (US$1.3bn) after concluding the strategic review it began in April 2014. At the time it was reported that Eircom’s shareholders could not convince potential investors that their €3bn (US$3.3bn) valuation was justified.
