One out of four binding offers for 6.300 phone masts owned by Italian mobile phone operator WInd (controlled by Russian Vimpelcom) is said to be out of the game already.
Actually a bid from US giant American Towers (the same group who just bought Telecom Italia’s phone masts in Brazil) seems to be quite lower than the other three offers that arrived on the desk of advisors Banca Imi and Hsbc on the deadline date last December 22nd (see a previous post by BeBeez),
So the race for the towers is now limited to three bidders that are Italian infrastructure fund F2i together with US private equity fund Providence; Italian group Ei Towers (controlled by Mediaset group with a 40% stake) and Spanish group Abertis.
Wind was selling about 50% of its 13,000 towers and leasing them back, but it seems to have decided to increase the number of towers on sale to 8,000 for a value of just less than one billion euro up from around 700 miliions of the initial offer. The sale procedure should close by the end of next February.
