Orange flogs Danish ops to TeliaSonera

Sound the retreat!

By Drew Cullen, 8th July 2004

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Orange is selling its Danish subsidiary to TeliaSonera for €600m ($742m)cash less net debt. The Nordic telecoms group will combine Orange Denmark with its own slightly smaller Danish mobile network. But with 1.1m subscribers, the enlarged group stills lie in third place behind market leaders TDC and Sonofon.

TeliaSonera aims to generate savings mostly from shutting down one of overlapping GSM networks. Also it anticipates modest capital expenditure synergies, i.e., it expects to buy less kit.

Now for a quote from Anders Igel, president and CEO of TeliaSonera.

"By combining Telia Mobile Denmark and Orange Denmark, we are creating a true and powerful contender to the two dominating players in the Danish market. Combined we will have critical mass and operational scale, sufficient to become the first choice provider of mobile services in Denmark. This combination will benefit the Danish mobile customers. In particular, the increased size will improve our ability to meet the demands of the business customer segments, but it will also enable us to continue improving our successful consumer service offer."

The sale marks Orange's departure from Scandinavia. It also used to have an operations in Sweden but fled the country, after balking at the expense of building a 3G network in a fragmented market.

The press release is here. ®