Sunrise, UPC Switzerland deal off, Liberty ‘keep talking’
November 13, 2019
Liberty Global has responded to the notification of termination received from Sunrise Communications regarding the amended Share Purchase Agreement (SPA) concerning UPC Switzerland. The agreement provides for Sunrise to pay a CHF 50 million (€45.8m) termination fee after providing the notice.
Mike Fries, CEO of Liberty Global, said: “While we would have preferred to keep the current SPA in place, we understand this move by Sunrise. The Sunrise board has been navigating a difficult situation. We look forward to continuing our conversations with either the board or Freenet about a potential transaction that creates significant value for both sets of shareholders and Swiss consumers. There is no question that UPC remains the fulcrum player in Switzerland’s converging telecom market.”
In response, Severina Pascu, CEO of UPC Switzerland, said that the company noted the announcement of the termination by Sunrise of the share purchase agreement (SPA) and Liberty Global’s response that it is looking forward to continuing conversations with either the board of Sunrise or Freenet about a potential transaction that creates significant value for both sets of shareholders and Swiss consumers.
“In the meantime, UPC continues to implement its growth plan, investing in the further development of its products and in the expansion of its high-performance cable network infrastructure,” she confirmed. “We are very proud of the strong results UPC has achieved over the last months: in the last quarter, our net adds were positive again. During the last year we have delivered a stunning array of innovations – from the new UPC TV experience, which is very popular with our customers, to the unlimited mobile portfolio. And just recently, we launched Gigabit Internet speed across the entire UPC footprint, thereby making a significant contribution to the digitisation of Switzerland. UPC is continuing to invest strongly in the digitisation and simplification of processes and systems. These accomplishments prove that we are successfully implementing our growth plan and we will now continue to build on these achievements.”