The shareholders of Australian incumbent Telstra have given their overwhelming support to the company’s participation in the country’s National Broadband Plan (NBN).
In a vote at the company’s AGM today, 99.45% of shareholders approved the…
The shareholders of Australian incumbent Telstra have given their overwhelming support to the company’s participation in the country’s National Broadband Plan (NBN).
In a vote at the company’s AGM today, 99.45% of shareholders approved the company’s action to participate in NBN.
This was despite the fact that Telstra is facing delays in getting regulatory approval for its structural separation, which is required as a part of its involvement in the NBN plan.
Telstra’s chairman, Catherine Livingstone, said that the vote made clear that both institutional and retail shareholders were supportive of Telstra’s cooperation with NBN.
She said: “We look forward to finalising the remaining conditions precedent, implementing the transaction and realising the benefits we expect it to deliver, including the contribution to sustainable free cashflow in the medium term and greater regulatory stability.”
Livingstone was also bullish about the chances of getting the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) to accept the company’s Structural Separation Undertaking (SSU) plan.
“We continue to believe that none of the issues raised by the ACCC in relation to the SSU is insurmountable and that they can be resolved in a way consistent with our principle of protecting shareholder value,” she said.
She added that if any “material changes” occurred, shareholders would be given the right to vote on them.
In 2010, Telstra signed a A$11bn (US$11.2bn) non-binding agreement to take part in the NBN programme, which required the company to separate.
Telstra subsequently presented a structural separation plan, which would see NBN Co, the wholesale company that the government created in order to implement the NBN programme, taking over Telstra’s customer services on its copper and television networks.
In late August, the ACCC asked Telstra to revise its structural separation plan.
Rod Sims, the ACCC’s chairman, said at the time that the ACCC’s main area of concern related to the adequacy of Telstra’s “proposed interim equivalence and transparency measures”.
“The ACCC’s initial view is that there needs to be a clear and enforceable commitment to an ‘equivalence of outcomes’ that enables wholesale customers and Telstra’s retail businesses to gain access to key input services of equivalent quality and functionality,” he said.
The ACCC has still not accepted Telstra’s revised separation plan.
