Vodaphone deal -

The Hungarian Government would pay up to EUR 200 million to by Vodaphone Hungary, according to a report HVG.

Gov’t would pay €200mn for Vodafone The government would be willing to pay up to €200 million to buy the Hungarian subsidiary of Vodafone, a source told HVG. The mobile-phone operator has rejected reports of such a sale, which first appeared in late January on high-tech website hwsw.hu.
The website said the government had two options after the Kúria upheld an earlier ruling invalidating last year’s tender for the launch of a state-owned mobile-phone operator. The first option is to wait for a new tender announcement, the second is to buy an op- erator already on the market. The latter would fit the government strat- egy of gaining ownership in strategic sectors of the economy, HWSW wrote. Vodafone would be an ideal target for the state, the website added, as the telecoms company has been struggling in recent years due to the sectoral taxes and last year’s tele- coms tax. Vodafone paid Ft 14.2 of the telecoms tax for the years 2010 and 2011, and is set to pay Ft 7 billion for its fiscal year ending March 31. Taking over an existing operator would cost less than setting up a company from scratch, HVG observes. A source told the weekly that MFB Invest and state energy company MVM would leave the MPVI consortium, formed to bid in last year’s tender, leaving Magyar Posta to man- age the takeover alone. Other scenarios do not rule out the possi- bility that the media authority NMHH is plan- ning to announce another frequency tender. (hvg.hu; hwsw.hu; N p.9)