Liberty reaches only 58% of Telenet
January 15, 2013
Liberty Global has announced that 9,497,637 ordinary shares and 3,000 warrants were tendered into the voluntary and conditional cash offer from its wholly-owned subsidiary Binan Investments on December 18th 2012 for the outstanding shares and other securities giving access to voting rights of Telenet it didn’t already own.
Following acceptance of the tendered shares, Liberty Global will hold 66,342,037 shares and 3,000 warrants in Telenet. Representing approximately 58.4 per cent of Telenet, a long way short of the complete ownership Liberty wants. It will announce later if it will extend the offer beyond the January 18th deadline.
Liberty Global notes that as stated in the prospectus for the offer, it intends to align the strategy and the operations of Telenet with the rest of the Company. Liberty Global is reviewing the current organisation, governance and reporting structure at Telenet with the intention of effecting a closer management integration of Telenet within its European operations. Telenet’s leverage policy will be aligned with that of Liberty Global such that target leverage will be 4.0 to 5.0x net total debt to annualised EBITDA (excluding financial leases) and may increase the indebtedness of Telenet to a level greater than this range.
Mike Fries, President and Chief Executive Officer of Liberty Global, commented: “We remain committed to investing in growth opportunities for Telenet, maintaining its position as a leading innovator in the Belgian market, and delivering best-in-class services to its customers. We believe that this is the right time for Telenet to be more closely integrated within our pan-European platform and in an environment where scale is paramount, we believe that closer integration will benefit all Telenet stakeholders.”