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MADRID, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Both Vodafone and
MasMovil denied a report by the El Confidencial news
website saying the Spanish mobile operator was working with
Goldman Sachs to buy the British telecom's business in Spain for
6 billion euros ($6.67 billion).
MasMovil and Goldman Sachs have held talks with the world's
second largest mobile operator regarding its Spanish business,
the Spanish website reported citing unnamed sources close to the
talks.
MasMovil, which has grown significantly in recent years via
acquisitions in many cases financed by the U.S. investment bank,
submitted last summer a non-binding offer rejected by Vodafone,
which instead asked for 8 billion euros for the Spanish unit, El
Confidencial said.
Consultancy firm McKinsey was also involved and in charge of
a strategic plan which estimated synergies worth 2 billion
euros, it said.
"MasMovil is not working on a process to buy, merge or
create a joint venture with Vodafone Spain," a MasMovil
spokesman said.
A Vodafone spokesman said: "There is no truth whatsoever in
speculation that Vodafone is in talks with MasMovil."
Vodafone has a market value of about 50 billion euros while
MasMovil is worth 2.95 billion euros after rising around 15% so
far in 2019, Refinitiv data showed.
The deal reported would create a company of around 9 billion
euros and reduce to three the number of domestic operators with
operations spanning the whole Spanish market alongside
Telefonica and France's Orange.
SPANISH STRUGGLES FOR VODAFONE
Vodafone is struggling in Spain where its service revenue
fell 9.3% in the first quarter, its worst performance in any
major market and worse than the 7.9% fall in the previous
quarter.
The company blamed steps it had taken to improve its
competitiveness and its decision not to renew unprofitable
football rights.
It has introduced new tariffs, including unlimited data
bundles in both its mobile-only and convergent offers for the
first time in Spain, but promotions by rivals saw it lose
158,000 mobile contract customers, 49,000 fixed broadband
customers and 24,000 TV customers.
($1 = 0.8988 euros)
(Reporting by Andres Gonzalez and Paul Sandle, writing by Jose
Elías Rodríguez; editing by Jason Neely)
