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ENNIO LEANZA
Meanwhile, more than 98 percent of Sunrise’s shares belong to the British-American cable network giant, as Liberty Global announced in Denver on Thursday night (local time). At the end of last week’s offer grace period, Liberty already owned 96.6 percent of Sunrise. Now the compulsory liquidation procedure of the remaining minority shareholders (in the technical jargon “squeeze-out”) begins, whose shares must be declared void.
Upon completion of this process, Sunrise’s shares will be delisted from the SIX Swiss Exchange, as Liberty announced. Sunrise will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty Group and merge with UPC. However, until the integration is completed early next year, Sunrise and UPC would operate independently, Liberty continued.
In this way, the group is implementing its plans as it had already announced. Last Monday, Liberty had its own people on the Sunrise board at an extraordinary general meeting. Now the integration and appointment of a boss for the merged company is pending.
Liberty Global had submitted the billion-dollar purchase offer for Sunrise in August. Sunrise shareholders will receive 5,000 million Swiss francs in cash. Switzerland’s second largest telecom group, including debt, is valued at CHF 6.8 billion.
Sunrise and UPC want to become a stronger challenger for the best Swisscom. Together they will achieve sales of 3.1 billion Swiss francs and have 2.1 million subscribers to mobile phones. With 1.2 million broadband customers and 1.3 million television subscribers, they have a market share of around 30 percent in each area.
One of the goals of the merger is to eliminate the respective weak points. Sunrise will have its own landline phone network, while UPC will now have a cell phone network.
