Brookfield and Alecta have bought a 49% stake in Telia Company’s Swedish tower business, a deal announced in January 2022. This follows similar deals, announced in December 2021, for the Norwegian and Finnish tower businesses to the same purchasers.
Allison Kirkby (pictured), Telia Company president and CEO, said: “We are delivering on our strategy to both develop and crystalize the value of our digital infrastructure, and I am delighted that we have Brookfield and Alecta as our tower partners in Norway, Finland and now in Sweden.”
She said Telia Towers, 51% owned by Telia Company and 49% by Brookfield and Alecta, is “the Nordic region’s leading tower company”, with an enterprise value of €2.6 billion.
“We aim to be an even stronger foundation to the continued digitalization of the Nordics,” said Kirkby.
Brookfield and Alecta’s 49% stake in the Swedish transaction is equivalent to €524 million. By comparison the Latvian transaction is tiny – just €10.75 million, for 100% of the shares in Telia Latvia.
The purchaser, in an open auction completed in January, is Tet, a telecoms and electricity company.
Unlike most of the outposts of Telia Company, the Latvian operation focused on business-to-business services alone, and not consumer services.
Tet – previously Lattelekom or Lattelecom – is 49% owned by Telia, with the other 51% owned by the Latvian government. Tet in turn owns 23% of the shares in Latvian mobile operator LMT.
Andreas Ekström, head of Latvia at Telia Company, said: “With this acquisition, Tet strengthens its position within the enterprise segment given Telia Latvia’s network, technology assets and highly skilled employees.”
According to figures given in January, Telia Latvia had just 46 employees. It offers large businesses across Latvia solutions across telecoms services, cloud services, data centre solutions and media solutions.
Ekström said: “Latvia is an interesting ICT market and Telia remains committed to continue contributing to the digitalization of Latvia through our engagement in Tet and LMT.”
