It seems that the history of the sale of Vodafone, which began with the dual interest of Iliad, the refusal and the interference of Swisscom, is about to come to an end. And today official that Swisscom has entered into binding agreements with the Vodafone group to acquire 100% of the Italian division.
There are 8 billion on the table and the objective is to integrate Vodafone within theFastweb operator, also owned by Swisscom. The figure is the same as that offered by Iliad, which however proposed to carry out a merger of equals (50/50) and not an acquisition of the entire company, a factor which may have pushed Vodafone to prefer the offer of the Swiss company.
Swisscom in its note states that “the combination of high-quality complementary mobile and fixed infrastructures, as well as the skills and assets of Fastweb and Vodafone Italia, will create a leading convergent operator in Italy”. The new group will in fact become the largest in Italy with around 9000 employees, over 7 billion in revenues and 33 million mobile customers.
The agreement should be concluded in less than a year, i.e. at the beginning of 2025, obviously subject to approval by the authorities. However, the vote of Swisscom shareholders will not be requested. In the contract signed by the Swiss group may use the Vodafone brand in our country for a maximum of five years.
Full fiber
The operator that will be born from this merger will not only have considerable firepower when it comes to the mobile market. Speaking of landlines, the new Fastweb Vodafone hub will boast 34.7% of the FTTC fiber marketand at the same time it will be in all respects the most important operator in the field of FTTH fiberwith the 36% of the market share. Very important figures given how much the market, operators and the state are pushing towards the adoption of fiber optic networks.
What’s happening to Vodafone
If you follow the world of telecommunications you will probably know that Vodafone’s Italian division was not the only one up for sale.
At the end of October last year, Vodafone Group Plc announced its agreement with Zegona Communications Plc for the sale of 100% of the shares of Vodafone Spain. In this regard, after the announcement for Italy, Margherita Della Valle, CEO of Vodafone Group, also expressed herself, confirming that the transactions in Italy and Spain will bring various advance proceeds to the group, useful for the revision of the capital allocation planned for some time within the company.
However, Vodafone will not disappear so quickly from Italy. To begin with, the agreement signed by Swisscom includes another 5 years of exploitation of the brand. Vodafone Group also has interests in 25 countries, in several of which it operates under its own brand.
