BERLIN :Deutsche Telekom will sell 51 per cent of its tower business to a consortium of Canada's Brookfield and private equity group DigitalBridge Group Inc after they placed a surprise bid, Handelsblatt reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed corporate sources.
The decision was made by Deutsche Telekom's supervisory board on Wednesday and will be announced on Thursday, the paper reported. Deutsche Telekom will retain the remainder of the stake. The new consortium follows the withdrawal early on Wednesday of Spain's Cellnex, which had been teaming up with Brookfield and was seen as a top contender for a stake.Deutsche Telekom, which declined to comment on an earlier Handelsblatt report about the new bid and its good chances of success, did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.
A transaction would rank as Germany's biggest deal this year and Europe's second-largest, after the Benetton family and U.S. fund Blackstone Inc's 58 billion-euro takeover of Italian infrastructure group Atlantia.The sales process, which kicked off in March, has attracted competition by strategic bidders and infrastructure funds for a stake in the masts unit known as Deutsche Funkturm GmbH .
The deal is expected to help the German telecoms company raise enough funds to cut its debt while keeping some exposure to key infrastructure.