By Javi West Larrañaga and Gianluca Lo Nostro
(Reuters) -French telecoms group Orange has not submitted an improved 4.8-billion-euro ($5.6-billion) offer for the 50% stake it does not own in Spanish operator MasOrange, Orange said on Thursday, dismissing a report by news website El Confidencial. El Confidencial said on Thursday that Orange was raising its offer for the stake currently held by private equity funds KKR, Cinven and Providence by 800 million euros. That would be a 20% increase from the 4 billion euros offered in July. The stake is valued at 10 billion euros including debt, El Confidencial said.
ORANGE ALSO PURSUING DEAL IN FRANCE
“Following the article published today in El Confidencial, the Orange group formally denies having submitted a 4.8 billion euro offer for the acquisition of the remaining 50% capital in MasOrange that it does not already own,” the company said in a statement to Reuters.
Cinven and Providence declined to comment. KKR did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Last year, Orange’s Spanish unit – of which it had full ownership – merged with rival MasMovil, the latter owned by the three funds. The resulting joint venture became Spain’s biggest mobile operator serving more than 30 million mobile customers. Orange is one of the European telecoms firms seeking to shake up a fragmented sector through mergers and acquisitions. The French company has submitted a 17-billion-euro bid for rival SFR jointly with peers Bouygues and Iliad. That offer was rejected by SFR’s parent Altice France, but the three carriers said on Wednesday they stood by it. Orange, which put forward less than a third of the 17 billion euros offered for SFR, could have enough capital for both transactions in France and Spain, a source with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Javi West Larrañaga and Gianluca Lo Nostro. Editing by Jane Merriman and Mark Potter)
