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Fintur sells stake in Azerbaijan telco; hedge fund building Telecom Italia stake

TOP NEWS

* Fintur Holdings BV, jointly owned by Telia Co. AB and Turkcell, agreed to sell its 51.3% stake in Azertel Telekomünikasyon Yatirim ve Dis Ticaret AS to Azerbaijan International Telecom LLC, which is owned by the Republic of Azerbaijan, for about €222 million.

* Elliott Management Corp. is building a stake in Telecom Italia SpA, in its intention to introduce changes in the company, such as nominating directors at the Italian operator's board, Bloomberg News reports, citing sources. The activist hedge fund is said to be concerned with TIM's performance after Vivendi SA took over as the telco's majority shareholder.

UK AND IRELAND

* Britain's TV industry should sharpen its competitive edge in the face of unprecedented market consolidation by U.S. media giants and fierce competition from Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Netflix Inc., according to British Broadcasting Corp. Director General Tony Hall.

* Trinity Mirror plc CEO Simon Fox rejected suggestions of regulatory threats to his cost-cutting plans worth £20 million, following the publisher's acquisition of the Star and Express newspapers, London's The Daily Telegraph reports. The Competition and Markets Authority is currently reviewing the plans, which would have involved combining the Express and the Star's operations.

* Digital rights campaigners warned of filing legal action against the British government if a clause in the proposed data protection legislation is enacted, London's The Guardian reports. The groups argued that the clause, which entails denying millions of people the right to access immigration data held on them by the Home Office, is illegal.

GERMANY, SWITZERLAND AND AUSTRIA U.K.

* Germany's Federal Cartel Office, or Bundeskartellamt, has approved the takeover of daily newspapers Frankfurter Rundschau and Frankfurter Neue Presse by German publisher Ippen Verlagsgruppe. The regulator considered the move an improvement for readers.

* Multiple German public broadcasters, including MDR, ARD and ZDF (DE), welcomed the outcome of a vote on public TV financing in Switzerland, which rejected a proposed cancellation of public fees. German broadcasters expect the German public to vote similarly.

* Mike Decker, CEO of German electronics manufacturer Geniatech Europe GmbH, is facing a €250,000 fine or six months' imprisonment for spreading the Linux free operating system and thus violating licensing terms, Die Welt reports.

* Only 205 complaints have been made about the social network enforcement law that took effect in Germany in January, according to the Bundesamt fuer Justiz, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.

FRANCE

* Orange SA overhauled its executive committee with the addition of seven new members. Effective May 2, the 15-member team will work to help the company transform into a multi-services operator, the company said.

* Orange warned that it would stop airing TF1 Group's channels if the media company would persist in seeking fees for content that are available for free in other distributors, Reuters reports, citing Le Figaro's interview with CEO Stéphane Richard.

* Technicolor confirmed the appointment of Laurent Carozzi as the group's CFO. He will become a member of the company's executive committee from March 12. Carozzi joins Technicolor from Publicis Groupe SA where he was deputy CFO from early 2017. He also spent 12 years at Lagardère SCA.

* Agence France-Presse appointed Jérôme Jaroussie as its chief information officer, effective March 5. Jaroussie replaces Caroline Raveton.

NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM AND LUXEMBOURG

* Qualcomm Inc. has extended the offering period of its previously announced cash tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding common shares of Netherlands-based NXP Semiconductors NV. The tender offer is now scheduled to expire March 9. In its last offer dated Feb. 20, Qualcomm offered $127.50 per share to NXP.

* Finland-based Nokia Corp. said Tele2 Netherlands will deploy Nokia Traffica's cognitive analytics real-time for monitoring and troubleshooting providing insights into traffic, network conditions, locations, devices and subscriber activity.

* Dutch public broadcaster NPO has updated its Start app, making it possible for the app's users to choose whether they want to share their internet surfing behavior with advertisers. The broadcaster faced criticism before because it would not let users choose if they wanted to share their data.

NORDIC COUNTRIES

* TDC A/S said that its customers can now make and receive calls, following a service interruption. Over 450,000 customers in the Nordics were affected, Reuters reports.

* Over two million individuals in Sweden have acquired a digital mailbox, Göteborgs Posten reports. The number has doubled in the past 12 months. Some 35 organizations in Sweden currently dispatch mail digitally using four primary operators.

SOUTHERN EUROPE

* GEDI Gruppo Editoriale SpA refused to accept a bid for its 30% stake in Persidera, saying that it was "not considered to be in line with expectations," Reuters reports, citing a statement from the Italian publisher.

* Altice NV has underscored its commitment to push through with its planned takeover of Media Capital, clarifying that the April 13 cutoff to decide on the deal is not a hard deadline and will not cause definite impacts to the transaction, Telecompaper reports.

* Altice Portugal SA's rebranding will not cover its units MEO, Moche and PT Empresas, which will retain its brand names, Telecompaper reports, citing Economia Online. Sources said the decision was due to the Altice brand's association with certain issues, including recent labor disputes.

* Greek operator Cosmote SA, Vodafone Group Plc unit Vodafone Greece, WIND Hellas Telecommunications SA and Ericsson Hellas SA have expressed interest in acquiring rights in the 3400 MHz to 3800 MHz band, Telecompaper reports, citing an announcement from regulator Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission. Participants in the recent public consultation see that the fourth quarter of 2019 is the appropriate time to make the spectrum available to them.

* Spanish telecom giant Telefónica SA has agreed to team up with China Unicom on the internet of things, according to a news release. The deal will see the two companies gaining access to each other's networks while working together to deploy IoT services across their respective footprints.

* Ericsson AB said it has concluded the deployment of Narrowband IoT technology on Cosmote's 4G network, covering 11 Greek cities and hotspots.

EASTERN EUROPE

* A new video-on-demand platform, called Cinezen, will soon launch in Russia, Broadband TV News reports, citing Kommersant. Cinezen targets to have about 150 to 200 content distributors in the platform by the end of the year, including Danish distributor Level K and the U.K.'s Celsius Entertainment.

* Maciej Bral has been appointed general director of Fox Networks Group in central Europe, Broadband TV News reports. Bral will be based in Warsaw, Poland, and will be in charge of developing and implementing strategies for the Fox Networks Group units in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Fox Networks Group is a unit of 21st Century Fox Inc.

FEATURED NEWS

M&A Replay: European deals: Comcast offers £22B for Sky; Cineworld completes Regal deal: Cable giant Comcast has challenged 21st Century Fox's bid for pay TV giant Sky with its own £22 billion offer, while British cinema operator Cineworld completed the acquisition of its U.S. peer Regal Entertainment.

M&A Replay: Cineworld closes Regal deal; Straight Path, Verizon complete merger: S&P Global Market Intelligence provides a wrap-up of U.S. companies' media and communications deal announcements and completions from Feb. 26 to March 2.

FEATURED RESEARCH

Global Multichannel: QVC's international revenue climbs 11% in Q4'17: QVC Inc.'s group of international networks in Japan, the U.K., Germany, Italy and France ended 2017 on a high note, as reported by parent company Liberty Interactive Corp. during its final earnings call.

Anne Freier, Amanda Kelly, Charlotte van Hek and Gerard O'Dwyer contributed to this report. The Daily Dose has an editorial deadline of 7 a.m. London time. Some external links may require a subscription.