Tunisie Telecom (TT) has announced its intention to proceed with a voluntary offer for the issued share capital of Maltese GO p.l.c to be launched pursuant the Chapter 11 of the Listing Rules issued by the Malta Financial Services, the company said in a statement Tuesday.
The announcement came after Tunisie Telecom was declared on Monday, May 23, 2016 as the final preferred bidder for GO’s shares.
Emirates International Telecommunications (Malta) Limited, which is the registered holder of 60,786,292 shares in the Company (representing 60% of the issued share capital of the Company) has, subject to certain conditions, irrevocably undertaken to accept the Voluntary Bid with respect to its shareholding in the Company, TT added in the statement.
According to the same source, the Voluntary Bid will be set out in an offer document containing complete details of the Voluntary Bid, including all terms and conditions, to be issued by Tunisie Telecom within 21 days from the date of this announcement.
Commenting on the Voluntary Bid, Nizar Bouguila, CEO of Tunisie Telecom expressed delight to have been selected as the final preferred bidder for the acquisition of the entire share capital of GO.
“We are committed to becoming a long-term partner for GO, supporting continued investments in the Maltese ICT sector as well as in Cyprus through Cablenet. GO is the leading provider of telecommunications services in Malta with a solid operational and financial performance track record,” he added.
The CEO also said he firmly believed in the strategic fit between our two companies as it will provide each of Tunisie Telecom and GO with the opportunity “to accelerate our fiber and 4G network developments as well as to expand our data center and cloud services offerings.”
GO will benefit from Tunisie Telecom’s scale, expertise and skillset while Tunisie Telecom will be able to leverage GO’s proven know-how in particular in quadruple-play offering as well as in content aggregation and delivery, he also pointed out.
Founded more than 165 years ago, Tunisie Telecom is the fully integrated telecom services operator in Tunisia with leading market positions across all segments with over 7 million customers and en employee base of c.7,500.
GO is Malta’s first quadruple play operator, a truly converged and integrated communications and entertainment company with a wide range of services.
As Malta’s leading provider of telecommunications services, GO offers fixed and mobile telephony, broadband internet services, digital TV, in addition to business-related services including data networking solutions, IP services, managed services and co-location facilities.
GO powers over 500,000 customer connections and services – thus making it the largest communications provider in Malta. GO has been in the business of communications for the past 30 years. GO owns a 51% stake in Cablenet, the fastest growing broadband operator in Cyprus.
