© Reuters. Tim’s logo can be seen at the company’s headquarters in Rome, Italy, on November 22, 2021. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Elvira Polina and Giuseppe Fonte
MILAN (Reuters) – The board of Italian state investment firm CDP is due to meet late Sunday to approve a multi-billion euro non-binding proposal for the former fixed network of the telephone monopoly telecom italy (bit:), said three people familiar with the matter.
CDP has partnered with Australian infrastructure fund Macquarie to bid on Italy’s most important telecommunications infrastructure, which US investment firm KKR has already made an offer for.
The CDP board was scheduled to meet at 3:00 pm (1400 GMT) to approve the proposal, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.
In recent weeks, sources told Reuters that both CDP-Macquarie and KKR have placed an enterprise value of €18 billion ($19 billion) on TIM’s power grid.
CDP’s proposal also includes Open Fiber, a competitor to TIM’s smaller fiber optic network owned by CDP and Macquarie, which will eventually be integrated into TIM’s grid.
KKR’s proposal, which reaches €20 billion when including €2 billion in earnouts, is the result of the government and TIM’s two largest shareholders, CDP and France’s Vivendi (OTC: ).
Both figures are below the €31bn price tag set by Vivendi to back the sale of the grid, which TIM itself has indicated a €25bn valuation.
The sale of Grid to reduce TIM’s €25 billion debt and free up half of its 40,000 domestic staff is a major plan in CEO Pietro Labriola’s push to restructure the group.
The government, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has repeatedly said it wants to gain control of TIM’s network while protecting jobs, but there is no common ground within the administration on how to proceed.
Under Italian rules, Rome has the power to block unwanted gains on strategically important assets such as TIM’s power grid.
A senior government source said CDP’s bid would be welcomed as it would make the sales process more transparent, but several scenarios remain unresolved.
In that approach, KKR remains open to involving state-owned companies as minority shareholders in TIM’s grid, but antitrust issues have led CDP to oppose such a role. there is
($1 = 0.9406 Euro)