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Musical Shares
Telia To Sell 14% Eircom Holding
1200 Hrs 05 October 1999
The merger of Telia and Telenor has caused some problems. Irish and European competition laws prohibits the group to have shares in competing operations. The problem here is that the new group has shares in both Eircom (the owners of Eircell) and Esat's Digifone. Telenor has a 49.5% shareholding in Digifone whereas Telia has a 14% shareholding in Eircom.
According to a report in the Irish Times, it is expected that Telia will sell approximately 9% of the 14% holding to the Dutch telecoms group KPN. However if the other 3% of the shares are put on the open market, Eircom shareholders may be in for yet another bumpy ride.
Though Eircom stocks have regained some value in recent days the information of the sell-off may cause the share price to drop. The critical time for Eircom will come in November when it is due to publish figures. To date, Eircom has been somewhat reluctant to part with any detailed figures concerning its operations. Recently it failed to meet a deadline set by the ODTR to provide figures to do with cross-subsidisation of Eircom ventures. |
