Telecom Italia in talks to take over Romania's Prime Telecom

Italian giant Telecom Italia has sent the owners of Romanian company Prime Telecom an offer to buy in the hope it will succeed in taking over one of the last independent companies on the market, whose main asset is the optical fibre network installed in all county seats of Romania.

According to some sources, the Italians offered between 11 and 13m euros for Prime Telecom, depending on the meeting of some performance criteria.

The Romanian company's shareholders are Cristian Grigore (59%), Adrian Ionescu (24%), Marius Ionescu (7%), Claudiu Amorţoaie (7%) and Gabriel Dulcu (1.5%), but they are discussing whether to sell or not at this moment, considering the company had a better valuation in previous years. According to the above-quoted sources, they also talked with Romtelecom over a sale.

"Had we paid attention to the rumours, the company should have been sold 10 times in the past year and a half. Currently there is nothing material as regards a possible sale of the company. We are at the centre of these talks because we are the largest telecom operator on the market. We are about the last 'cake' on the domestic telecom market," said Marius Ionescu, one of the shareholders and the marketing manager of the company.

Prime Telecom last year posted 8.8m-euro turnover and EBITDA worth 2.1m euros.