(Bloomberg) —
CVC Capital Partners has made a non-binding offer for 49% of Telecom Italia SpA’s new enterprise services unit, according to a statement from the Italian phone carrier on Monday confirming a Bloomberg report from the weekend.
The unit, which is still being set up, will be part of Telecom Italia’s ServCo division and will include the iconic Olivetti brand, cloud computing activities, the Noovle data-center business, the Telsy cybersecurity business, and others assets, according to the statement. Services grouped within the enterprise unit generated about 2.7 billion euros ($3 billion) of revenue last year.
The proposal came late Friday and will be reviewed by Telecom Italia’s board, according to the statement.
CVC has asked for eight weeks to run due diligence on the unit, people familiar with the matter said, and the private equity group has offered guarantees that it will retain the current 6,500 staff. CVC’s non-binding offer comes as Chief Executive Officer Pietro Labriola pushes ahead with plans to extract value from Telecom Italia by dividing up its businesses.
CVC has been working on the Telecom Italia deal for the last year, the people said, asking not to be named discussing private deliberations. Nomura Holdings Inc. and Barclays Plc are among CVC’s advisers, they said.
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The offer comes ahead of a Telecom Italia board meeting scheduled for March 29, where the carrier’s directors are set to ask KKR & Co. for more details about its 10.8 billion-euro bid for the entire company. KKR made its offer in November and reiterated its interest this month.
In the statement on Monday, Telecom Italia said that talks with KKR are continuing and that it will seek more details from the private equity firm in order to evaluate the “attractiveness, actuality and deliverability” of its non-binding expression of interest dating back to November of last year.
Other funds such as Apax Partners are also evaluating the former monopoly, Il Sole 24 Ore reported Saturday, without saying where it got the information.
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