Europe gives thumbs up to Telenor simplification sales

The European Commission has given its blessing for Telenor to offload assets in Eastern Europe to Dutch financial and investment group PPF.

The Telenor business units in Hungary, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Serbia will now transfer into the PPF portfolio, for a cool €2.8 billion after the bureaucrats concluded there are direct risks to competition. The initial concern had focused around the existing PPF portfolio, which features O2 Czech Republic and Bulgarian broadcast company Nova Broadcasting Group, though little or no cross-over was found.

“The Commission found that the proposed transaction would raise no competition concerns,” the Commission said in a statement. “First, it would not give rise to horizontal overlaps, as the companies’ activities are confined to the different territories in which they hold their respective telecommunication licenses.”

Another area of concern was the wholesale international roaming and wholesale mobile and fixed call termination services and the downstream markets, though the Commission stated this would be ‘unproblematic’.

The new will be welcomed by Telenor, which has been looking to simplify its business operations, consolidating spend in its Nordic and Asian businesses. The headline of this strategy is focused around restructuring and a reduction of OPEX, though offloading non-core assets is generally a theme which goes hand-in-hand with such initiatives. Discontinued operations over the last couple of months have included Telenor India, Hungary, Montenegro & Serbia and Bulgaria, Telenor Common Operation, Telenor Microfinance Bank and Telenor Banka.

Looking at the last financial results, total revenues declined by 1%, though subscription numbers in the core markets are heading in the right direction. In Norway, and across Scandinavia on the whole, numbers were solid if not glorious, though Malaysia, Pakistan and Bangladesh all grew subscriber bases. Over the course of the quarter, two million subscriptions were added to the ranks, taking the total up to 172 million.