Liberty Global no longer expects to acquire Holland’s largest cable operator Ziggo, CEO Mike Fries said in an interview with Het Financieele Dagblad. At least, not for the moment.
“We’re nowhere at this moment [with regards to Ziggo].There are no talks. They tell us they are committed to an initial public offering,” said Fries, according to the newspaper.
Last June Ziggo postponed its IPO due to “volatile stock markets,” but its owners are in no rush to float the company. “They won’t easily panic and exit at a low price,” said Fries to the FD.
Liberty Global is still interested in acquiring Ziggo, but Fries said they need to proceed carefully. “The market is calling for it. But it needs to happen in a prudent manner.”
Although the Dutch competition and telecoms authorities will be watching such a deal with great care, this should not stop a possible takeover, according to Shane O’Neill, chief strategy officer of Liberty Global, who believes that Dutch regulators would not obstruct the formation of a monopoly if his company decided to bid. “It is the situation that exists in the UK, in France and in Spain,” he said last April to the FT.
Ziggo is owned by private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Cinven, and is the result of a tripartite fusion within the cable industry, which started with Warburg Pincus purchasing Multikabel in 2005. The following year Warburg Pincus and Cinven bought Casema and combined the operator with Multikabel.
In 2006, the two companies acquired the cable assets of Essent (@Home) and changed the name of the resulting entity to Ziggo. The operator is the biggest cabler in the country with over 3 million homes connected.
Should Liberty Global acquire Ziggo and merge it with UPC Nederland, the two combined networks would serve over 5 million households.
