Milan’s Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper is reporting that the board of electricity company Enel has accepted an offer by Australian bank Macquarie to buy its 50% stake in Open Fiber.
“The board would therefore intend to accept the proposal at the November meeting or at the beginning of December at the latest,” says the newspaper. Last month Macquarie made a binding €2.65 billion offer for Enel’s stake in Open Fiber, the Italian wholesale fibre company.
State investment company Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), owns the other 50% of Open Fiber and is also a shareholder in TIM, the former Telecom Italia.
The longer-term aim is then to merge Open Fiber FiberCop, the last-mile company formed earlier in the year from a merger of FlashFiber, the fibre network owned by TIM and Fastweb, owned by Swisscom.
The aim is for FiberCop to merge with Open Fiber to create a single national telecommunications network.
Il Sole 24 Ore says that Macquari’s offer means Open Fiber has an enterprise value of €7.5 billion. A successful implementation of a single national network project would lead to a further earn out, notes the newspaper.
A combination of Open Fiber with FiberCop would be worth €15 billion.
