Quarterly figures and acquisitions determined the mood in the European telecom sector last week, according to Telecompaper. In the end, the price of the TPSI European Telecom Services index fell by 0.5 percent over week 34, while the EuroStoxx 50 index rose by 0.2 percent. Syn (Vodafone Iceland) was the largest downer with -14 percent, the Italian Tiscali the largest with +21 percent. Apart from these microcaps, the Polish Play (-6.2%) and the Spanish MasMovil (+ 8.8%) were the biggest outliers.
Sunrise (-5.4% over week 34) and major shareholder Freenet (-1.6%) crossed swords, last week. Sunrise has an agreement with Liberty Global (-1.8%) for the acquisition of UPC Schweiz and must make a share issue for this. Freenet, which has a 24.6 percent interest in Sunrise, finds the price and risk too high and therefore does not participate in the issue. In response, Sunrise suspended the Freenet supervisory board members. Sunrise also released its report for the second quarter.
- Other takeover news: Macquirie completed the acquisition of Kcom and Play takes over S3. MasMovil buys a minority interest in Cabonitel, Portugal. BT is busy selling various parts of Global Services, now also the Dutch branch assets.
- Other quarterly figures: fiber optic operator Zayo (+ 0.2%) and the Icelandic Syn(-14%), trading under the name Vodafone; the Polish Netia (+ 0.4%) and the Russian MTS (+ 1.3%); the German Tele Columbus (-1.5%) and the Swedish A3 (+ 2.0%), as well as the Ice Group (-5,4%).
