The takeover of Orange Austria by Hutchison 3G will be announced by Friday the latest, Austrian Wirtschaftsblatt reported, referring to well informed circles.
As reported previously Hutchison is said to offer €1.4bn for the asset, but the new owner…
The takeover of Orange Austria by Hutchison 3G will be announced by Friday the latest, Austrian Wirtschaftsblatt reported, referring to well informed circles.
As reported previously Hutchison is said to offer €1.4bn for the asset, but the new owner intends to sell on no frills subsidiary Yesss! to Telekom Austria (TA) for between €300m and €400m. Wirtschaftsblatt wrote that TA will also acquire Orange’s two UMTS licences as well as parts of the infrastructure.
A sale of frequencies to TA could result in complaints by competitor T-Mobile, the article stated with reference to T-Mobile insiders.
The companies are already in pre-notification talks with the European antitrust authorities in Brussels, which need to approve the deal, Wirtschaftsblatt said.
Antitrust investigations by the European Commission can take several months. A first phase lasts for 25 working days, but if a more complicated transaction is taken into a phase II investigation, the regulator has another 90 to 105 working days for detailed scrutiny of the deal.
This happened previously when, in 2005, T-Mobile Austria announced plans to acquire competitor tele.ring. In November 2005 the then Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes opened an in-depth phase II investigation, arguing at the time that the transaction might create significant competition problems.
The takeover was cleared five months later, in April 2006, after the merging parties agreed to divest UMTS frequencies and mobile telephony sites owned by tele.ring to competitors.
Orange Austria is owned by France Telecom and private equity firm Mid Europa Partners.
