In order to avoid the sale of its Swiss cable and TV business to Sunrise Communications, Liberty Global has introduced a deal of approximately $501.45 Million. However, the deal could not be completed as a significant Sunrise investor has shown resistance to the agreement. According to some of Sunrise shareholders, the rate of 6.3 billion francs for UPC, a cable operator from Switzerland, is too pricey. The Swiss telecoms group’s recent strategy to raise the fund of approximately 2.8 billion francs to support this purchase also faced opposition from its investors and raised distress that Liberty Global was not participating in the latest agreement.
According to the latest statement by Liberty Global, a company established by John Malone, in order to ease through the capital hike required to secure the sale, it had offered to purchase up to 500 million Swiss francs in recently formed Sunrise shares. While votes on the capital boost required completing the agreement will be offered by Sunrise investors on Oct. 23, a recent survey by Reuters highlights a minimum 30% of Sunrise shares, such as German group Freenet, are against the capital hike.
Freenet, the company holding almost a quarter of Sunrise’s stake, recently stated that in spite of Liberty Global’s proposal, it still showed disagreement to the potential largest telecoms agreement of Switzerland. In recent trading, there was a 1.9% gain in the shares of Sunrise before moving back to trade 0.4% higher following comments from Freenet.
On a similar note, Comcast and SK Telecom recently announced that they have joined forces to establish a worldwide-level eSports firm. While this partnership firm is named SK Telecom CS T1, the key shareholder of this company with about 55% equity stake is supposed to be SK Telecom. In the meantime, a joint investment of approximately $41 Million will be done by Comcast and the U.S. hedge fund Highland Capital, which will make them the 2nd and 3rd-biggest shareholders, respectively.
