Mergers and Acquisitions

Sterlite Tech has signed definitive agreements for the acquisition of Italy-based, specialised optical fibre and cable manufacturer Metallurgica Bresciana S.p.A (Metallurgica).

Having now completed its acquisition of General Cable, Prysmian Group is launching a new organisation to begin the company’s integration.

Prysmian described the newly created group as a ‘world leader in the energy and telecom cable systems industry.’ It has global headquarters in Milan and reported sales of more than €11 billion (pro-forma as of 31 December 2017). There are approximately 30,000 employees across 112 plants and 25 research and development centres in more than 50 countries.

Prysmian Group has now completed its acquisition of General Cable, the company has announced. Prysmian Group signed the definitive agreement to acquire General Cable at the end of last year in a deal that valued the latter at $3 billion, including debt and certain liabilities.

GTT Communications has confirmed that its acquisition of Interoute – the operator of one of Europe’s largest independent fibre networks – is now complete.

Ciena Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held network performance management software provider, Packet Design.

Ciena says that the acquisition would help to accelerate its Blue Planet suite of products by allowing the extension of its intelligent automation capabilities beyond Layers 0-2 and into IP. The system itself was attained via the company’s 2015 acquisition of Cyan (see Ciena buys Cyan for its software smarts).

UPC Switzerland has acquired a cable network that serves some 15,000 homes in the Höfe region of Germany, from EW Höfe.

EW Höfe said that it decided to sell its existing cable network to long-standing partner and Liberty Global-owned company, UPC Switzerland, in order to focus on the expansion of its new fibre optic network. This is set for completion in 2019.

TalkTalk intends to sell its direct B2B business to The Daisy Group for £175 million. The two companies have each signed heads of terms on a proposed deal which would transfer all existing TalkTalk direct B2B customers to Daisy.

The deal includes around 80,000 small, small to medium and large businesses, and TalkTalk says that this represents less than 20 per cent of the company’s B2B revenues. The transaction is subject to contract, with the intention to complete in late July 2018.

UK-based alternative fibre network provider, CityFibre has agreed the terms of a recommended cash acquisition by Bidco.

Newly incorporated company, Bidco – which is indirectly owned by a consortium including private equity house Antin and Goldman Sachs’ West Street Infrastructure Partners – is paying 81p per share for CityFibre in a deal worth £537.8 million.

GTT Communications has continued on the acquisition trail with the purchase of Accelerated Connections (ACI), a Toronto-headquartered provider of managed networking, voice over IP (VoIP) and colocation services, serving large distributed Canadian enterprises.