It’s seems that 2005 is the “transactions year” for the Romanian telephony market.
So here we go:

Greeks are buying-back Cosmorom, after they lauched it in 2002 and then sell it to Romtelecom S.A..
Greece’s largest wireless operator, Cosmote Mobile Telecommunications SA, said Friday said it has agreed to buy a 70 percent stake in Romanian mobile operator CosmoRom for euro120 million (US$150 million).
Cosmorom is the mobile arm of RomTelecom, Romania’s dominant fixed-line telecom operator, which is 54-percent owned by Greece’s Hellenic Telecommunications Organization, or OTE, the parent of Cosmote.
Cosmorom will undergo a share capital increase after which Cosmote will buy the 70 percent stake. CosmoRom will keep the remaining 30 percent stake.
Cosmote said that on completion of the purchase, CosmoRom’s debt will either be capitalized or written off, except for the euro16 million (US$20 million) that CosmoRom owes to OTE’s unit OTE International.
Third-party liabilities up to euro2 million (US$2.5 million) will not be written off, Cosmote said.
Cosmote said that the purchase agreement also includes some minority rights in CosmoRom for RomTelecom.

bought

Bucharest Daily News, March 16, 2005
Vodafone buys Connex in Romania’s biggest deal in 15 years

Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile telephone company, has bought mobile telephone operator MobiFon-Connex in the biggest deal Romania has seen in 15 years, Ziarul Financiar writes in today’s issue.
The total transaction will be worth 3.5bn dollars (2.6bn euros) and also includes the takeover of Czech operator Oskar Mobil from Canadian Telesystem International Wireless Group, the majority shareholder in the two operators. At the same time, the British operator will take on 950 million dollars of net debts.
The deal was made on Monday night, with Connex employees receiving e-mail notification of the news from Ted Lattimore, the company’s president and COO.
Officials from the two companies did not give any details as to the value of the two operators in the deal individually. However, analysts believe most of the money was paid for MobiFon, which has a market value of 2-3bn dollars (1.5-2.3bn euros).
Vodafone already owned 20.1% in MobiFon before the deal, but has now acquired a further 79% in the company. The remaining 0.9% is owned by vice-premier George Copos through Dargate Ltd (Cyprus). Copos originally had nearly 2% in the company when it was established back in 1996.
“I am delighted that MobiFon and Oskar, both fast growing mobile operators, will become part of Vodafone,” announced Arun Sarin, the chief executive of Vodafone.

I am expecting new transactions till the end of this year. And I am expecting with lot of curiosity the re-branding campaing for Connex into Vodafone.

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