Telenor to merge with TeliaSonera?
By Dusan Belic on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 8:44 AM PST In General
After TeliaSonera rejected France Telecom’s bid, the saga of the industry consolidation in the far north of Europe continues. Apparently, Norway-based Telenor is interested to merge with TeliaSonera.
The chairman of the Norwegian parliament’s business and industry committee Ola Borten Moe thinks it could be a good industrial solution for Telenor to buy TeliaSonera. “They were close to being merged several years ago, and there clearly remain interesting synergies between the two companies,” he added.
The Norwegian government owns 54% of Telenor, while TeliaSonera is 37.3% owned by the Swedish government, and 13.7% by the Finnish government. The Swedish government is understood to be keen to privatise its stake and reports suggest that it may be more willing to sell to Norway in order to keep the company in Nordic hands.
The Norwegian government has yet to comment officially on the speculation…
[Via: Guardian]
