Swisscom, Switzerland's biggest telecoms group, said Monday it had launched a friendly takeover bid for Italian rival Fastweb worth 3.7 billion euros (4.9 billion dollars).Swisscom has offered 47 euros per share in cash, 12 percent higher than the closing price of Fastweb shares on Friday, which had valued the company at 3.34 billion euros.Fastweb will make an "important contribution to Swisscom's financial results within a short time period", Swisscom said.Shares in Fastweb had closed 6.6 percent higher on Friday after reports about the deal appeared in the Italian press last week.A takeover offer had been seen as likely since the beginning of 2006 when the founder of Fastweb, Silvio Scaglia, who owns 18.75 percent of the group, briefly mandated Deutsche Bank to study the possibility of selling the group.Fastweb is Italy's second-biggest provider of broadband, but it made a loss of 123.6 million euros last year on sales of 1.26 billion euros.It delivers telephone services, Internet and television to more than one million customers in more than 130 cities.Swisscom has a market capitalisation of about 16 billion euros.
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