Swisscom AG eyes Fastweb
p2pnet.net news:- FastWeb SpA, founded in 1999, has caught the eye of Swisscom AG, Switzerland’s largest telephone company.
It wants to buy the company for 3.7 billion euros ($4.9 billion) in cash, “to add a million broadband Internet customers in Italy as growth at home slows,” says Bloomberg News, going on:
“FastWeb called the offer `’friendly,’ and Chairman Silvio Scaglia said he’ll sell his 19 percent holding unless there are ‘competing higher offers’.
“Government-controlled Swisscom would gain 13 percent of Italy’s high-speed Web market, where broadband use is a third lower than in the U.K. or France. Swisscom’s fixed-line unit has lost users since the nation of 7.4 million people opened to competition in 1998, and profit has dropped for four quarters.”
Might Vodafone step in? It already has a “commercial agreement with Fastweb to jointly offer parts of each other’s services and was named by Italian newspapers last year as a possible suitor for the Fastweb,” says Reuters.
But it’s nonetheless unlikely to make a counterbid, says the story, quoting an unidentified source.
Also See:
Bloomberg News – Swisscom Offers to Buy FastWeb for 3.7 Billion Euros, March 12, 2007
Reuters – Vodafone bid for Fastweb highly unlikely – source, March 12, 2007
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