Telecom Italia (TI) and US investment firm Fintech have once again postponed the deadline to complete the US$960m sale of the Italian incumbent’s controlling stake in Telecom Argentina to 25 September.
TI said the agreement was reached yesterday…
Telecom Italia (TI) and US investment firm Fintech have once again postponed the deadline to complete the US$960m sale of the Italian incumbent’s controlling stake in Telecom Argentina to 25 September.
TI said the agreement was reached yesterday evening, adding that all terms and conditions of the stock purchase agreement remained unchanged.
On 12 August, the company had already announced that the sale deadline, originally scheduled for early August, would be extended to 1 September.
TI CEO Marco Patuano had stressed, in mid-June, that no obstacles stood in the way of the sale of the 22.7% stake in the Buenos Aires-based telco, although the national telecoms regulator Secom gave no exact timeframe to rule on the deal.
“The company has not given a specific reason for the delay, but presumably regulatory approvals have proven more complicated than envisaged,” Rick Mattila, a telecoms analyst at the investment banking division of Mitsubishi UFG Financial Group, said.
He added: “We do not view this delay as that material for Telecom Italia. That said, should the deal for some reason fail to go through, then that would likely be taken as a negative by credit markets.”
Regulatory approval was once complicated by Fintech’s interest in cableco and ISP Cablevision but the firm decided to exit the asset at the end of May.
Last December, TI sold stakes in Telecom Argentina held by its subsidiary Tierra Argentea to Fintech for US$109m.
However, the bulk of the deal involves the transfer of TI’s 68% stake in Sofora Telecommunicaciones for US$751m. Sofora, in turn, controls the Argentine telco’s majority shareholder Nortel Inversora.
Fintech will pay a further US$100.5m, provided TI fulfils certain agreements to provide Telecom Argentina with services and technical support for the next three years, among other conditions.
Providing the second part of the deal closes, Fintech – the vehicle of low-profile Mexican investor David Martinez – plans to launch a tender offer for the remaining publicly traded shares in Telecom Argentina and Nortel.
