The "war" over the future of mobile telephony operator Cosmorom, waged by its two shareholders, Greek company OTE and the Romanian State seems far from being worked out and has reached the fallback stage.
Parliamentary sources confirmed for Ziarul Financiar on Wednesday that foreign legal advisors for the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology had indeed arrived in Romania. They were called in to assess the situation and decide on the best steps to defend the Romanian party's interests. On the other hand, OTE had called the General Meeting of Shareholders for yesterday in Athens, with the situation in Bucharest likely to be one of the main topics on the agenda.
The tensions between the two shareholders on the fate of RomTelecom's mobile telephony division surged last week, when OTE's CEO Lefteris Antonakopoulos said, "our intention is to close Cosmorom, but keep the mobile telephony licence as an asset of the company."
The message, addressed to investors and analysts, was surprisingly final, given that pulling the plug on Cosmorom was merely one of the options available to RomTelecom's management. Furthermore, Antonakopoulos had previously said the final decision was to be made at a later time, i.e. by September. Communications minister Dan Nica retorted, explaining such a decision could be gravely prejudicial to RomTelecom and its shareholders and that the ministry reserved the right to "take every step necessary accordingly."
Will the two parties come to a lawsuit on the closing of Cosmorom and on its licence? Hard to say. At any rate, the possibility remains, because, as the above-mentioned sources say, RomTelecom's privatisation contract includes a provision stipulating neither party may make a decision such as the one about the future of Cosmorom on its own. victor@zf.ro
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