2018 has got off to an interesting start on the M&A front in Central and Eastern Europe.
While there has been no firm news about the sale of CME’s assets in the region, it has just been reported that Telenor is in talks to dispose of its operations in Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro and possibly also Hungary.
At the same time, the sale of the Polish cable operator to Macquarie has received official approval from the country’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK).
2017 ended with a report that the Chinese energy group CEFC and Czech/Slovak financial group Penta Investments had made a joint bid of around $2 billion for Time Warner-owned CME. More recently, we have been reminded of the original deal to sell CME’s assets in Slovenia and Croatia to Slovenia Broadband, which is majority owned by the US investment firm KKR. Initially announced in July 2017, it subsequently failed to gain regulatory approval in Croatia and is now under the microscope in Slovenia. While KKR, which already owns the country’s leading cable operator Telemach, is expecting a positive decision from the Agency for Protection of Competition (AVK), this is far from certain and may come with strict conditions attached.
Meanwhile, it has just been reported that Telenor is in talks to sell its assets in up to four CEE markets to an unnamed US fund. KKR has been mentioned as the potential buyer, but this has also been denied.
Should any deal go ahead, it would mark a major turnaround for the Norwegian company, which strengthened its position in Bulgaria in 2013 through the acquisition of Globul, the country’s second largest mobile operator, from OTE in a deal worth €717 million. Since then, it has failed to enter the fixed-line market, where its two main competitors BTC (Vivacom) and Mobiltel are already leading providers of TV services.
Finally in Poland, Inea expects business as usual following its sale to Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund. Janusz Kosinski, the president of the management board and co-founder of Inea, noted that the operator’s results doubled whilst it was owned by Warburg Pincus and they will continue to grow under Macquarie.
