French conglomerate Vivendi has mandated banks to advise it on the listing of its telecoms subsidiary SFR, TelecomFinance was told.
Societe Generale and Citigroup are thought to be the lead advisers on the IPO, expected to take place in 2014.
Media…
French conglomerate Vivendi has mandated banks to advise it on the listing of its telecoms subsidiary SFR, TelecomFinance was told.
Societe Generale and Citigroup are thought to be the lead advisers on the IPO, expected to take place in 2014.
Media reports suggested that Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, Lazard and Bank of America Merrill Lynch might also take roles in the transaction.
A month ago, Vivendi said it would decide early next year whether to separate SFR – which has seen its revenues decline steadily in the face of a price war in the French wireless market – from the rest of the group.
The separation “would create significant value to shareholders as they would have the opportunity to invest in two clearly differentiated vehicles evaluated according to the specifics of their respective sectors”, Vivendi said in a statement at the time.
Rumours of an SFR spinoff and/or IPO have been circulating for a while. Hiving off France’s second-largest mobile operator into a separate entity would remove the operator’s debt from Vivendi’s balance sheet.
Vivendi is also in the process of offloading its majority Maroc Telecom stake for €4.2bn as well as its video game publisher Activision Blizzard for US$8.2bn, in a further effort to focus on its media operations and cut its debt load estimated at €17.4bn as of 30 June.
A Vivendi spokesperson refused to comment.
