Privatisation of Slovenia's Telekom seen delayed - paper

Telekom Slovenije, D.d

02/09/2014 08:32

By Marja Novak 
    LJUBLJANA, Sept 2 (Reuters) - The privatisation of 
Slovenia's largest telecoms provider Telekom  TLSG.LJ  will 
probably be delayed until the new government, which is likely to 
take over later in September, endorses the sale, daily paper 
Finance reported on Tuesday. 
    "All possible buyers are waiting for the new government to 
say whether the privatisation will continue as planned," said 
Finance, citing an unofficial source. 
    Law professor Miro Cerar, who became Slovenia's prime 
minister last week after his Party of Miro Cerar (SMC) won a 
snap general election in July, will take over after parliament 
approves his cabinet, which is expected within two weeks. 
    His SMC party is due to sign a coalition agreement with 
pensioners' party Desus and the centre-left Social Democrats 
(SD) later this week, with Desus and SD both reluctant about 
privatisation in general.  
    Cerar had said he was against the privatisation of 
strategically-important firms like Telekom but would not stop 
the sale if that would hurt Slovenia's credibility. 
 ID:nL5N0QV3ES  
    According to local media, the draft coalition agreement 
includes the possibility of dividing Telekom into services and 
infrastructure parts before the sale, so the infrastructure 
could remain in state hands. 
    Analysts said that would halve the price of Telekom which 
has a market capitalisation of 855 million euros ($1.1 billion) 
and was expected to be sold for about one billion euros. 
    "I hope the government will not divide Telekom as in that 
case it will probably not find a buyer at all. However, I expect 
that Telekom will be sold as a whole company, also due to the 
pressure from Brussels," said Jure Vrhunec, a trader at 
Raiffeisen Bank.  
    Telekom is the largest of 15 firms that the outgoing 
centre-left government slated for privatisation last year. So 
far only two of those have been sold. 
    Privatisation is seen as a key element in Slovenia's drive 
to consolidate public finances after the country narrowly 
avoided an international bailout for its banks in December.  
    Sources close to the deal told Reuters in July telecom firms 
Deutsche Telekom  DTEGn.DE  and Turkcell  TCELL.IS  and 
investment companies CVC  CVC.UL , Cinven  CINV.UL , Providence 
and Apax could be interested in purchasing Telekom. 
    Government investment firm SDH, which is in charge of 
coordinating the sale of Telekom, gave no immediate comment but 
said in June it would invite investors to submit binding bids 
later this year. 
    The outgoing government had expected to sell Telekom by the 
end of the year. 
    The government and state-owned firms are selling a total of 
72.75 percent of Telekom, with the rest of the company already 
in the hands of private investors. 
    (1 US dollar = 0.7618 euro) 
 
 (Reporting by Marja Novak; Editing by Mark Potter) 
 ((Marja.Novak@thomsonreuters.com; +386-8-205-6369; Reuters 
Messaging: marja.novak.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) 
 
Keywords: TELEKOM PRIVATISATION/