ROME: VimpelCom Ltd.’s Italian unit agreed to sell a stake in its wireless towers to Spain’s Abertis Infraestructuras SA for 693 million euros ($774 million) to reduce debt.
The carrier’s Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA unit is selling 90 percent of its subsidiary that owns over 7,300 towers and plans to close the transaction this quarter, the Amsterdam- based company said in a statement Monday. It will keep 10 percent.
VimpelCom, co-owned by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman with partners and Norway’s Telenor ASA, is seeking to reduce its $20 billion net debt that resulted from buying assets in Italy, Asia and Africa from Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris. The company sold a majority stake in its Algerian Djezzy unit to a local sovereign fund earlier this year and disposed of a stake in a Canadian unit last year.
Abertis beat bids from American Tower Corp., Mediaset SpA’s EI Towers SpA and Investment fund F2i SGR SpA, which teamed with Providence Equity Partners Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.
Selling wireless towers is a way for carriers to raise cash and focus on services instead of hardware maintenance. Last week EI Towers SpA, the broadcast-tower company controlled by former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, offered 1.23 billion euros for state-controlled competitor RAI Way SpA. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s government rejected the bid.
