Telecoms.com

A new report cites a few anonymous inside sources for the gossip that Deutsche Telekom his hoping to get as much as €5 billion for its Dutch subsidiary.

We have Het Financeele Dagblad, which seems to be the Dutch equivalent of the Financial Times, to thank for the scoop. Additionally, we’re indebted once more to Google Translate, with the usual caveats about stuff possibly being lost in translation. The paper spoke to telecoms and finance industry types, who reckoned the price should be in the 4-5 billion range.

There are only three MNOs in the Netherlands, so it’s very unlikely that any acquisition attempt by KPN or Vodafone would be even seriously considered by EU antitrust regulators. The smart money, therefore, is on private equity, which has also been rumoured to be sniffing around KPN.

DT apparently tried to flog T-Mobile Netherlands five years ago, but nobody met its asking price. Now that it has been fattened up by M&A and with telecoms companies considered solid, low-risk private equity investments in these turbulent times, there seems every likelihood DT might be more successful this time, if the rumours are true.