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Acquisitions and disposals prior to the 2006 financial year |
The BT of today was largely created by a radical restructuring of the company in the 2002 financial year. This restructuring involved the UK’s largest-ever rights issue (raising £5.9 billion), the demerger of O2 (comprising BT’s wholly-owned mobile assets in Europe), the disposal of significant non-core
businesses and assets, the unwind of Concert (our joint venture with AT&T) and the creation of customer-focused lines of business.
In the 2005 financial year, we acquired Infonet, one of the world’s leading providers of international managed voice and data network services, for £520 million, including acquisition costs. Excluding Infonet’s net cash balance, the net value of the deal was £315 million. We also acquired the 74% of
Albacom that we did not already own for a total acquisition cost of £131 million. Albacom provides data transmission, voice and internet services to the Italian business communications market. In October 2004, there was an IPO (initial public offering) of the Singapore telecommunications and media
company, StarHub, in which BT held an 11.9% stake. We disposed of our entire holding through the IPO for net proceeds of £77 million. In December 2004, we completed the sale of our 15.8% stake in Eutelsat to GS Capital Partners – an investment partnership affiliated with Goldman Sachs – for net
proceeds of £356 million.
Acquisitions and disposals in the 2006 financial year |
A number of acquisitions and disposals were completed in the year, including:
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in April 2005, we completed the acquisition of Radianz, the leading financial services extranet provider, from Reuters for a total consideration of £143 million. The purchase of Radianz is another vital step in our transformation into a global provider of networked IT services |
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between July and September
2005, the conditions enabling BT to redeem the exchangeable bond over
our shares in LG Telecom were fulfilled. As a result, virtually all the
bondholders exercised their right to convert their bonds into LG Telecom
shares, enabling us to dispose of all our shares. The transaction gave
rise to a bond redemption gain of £27 million |
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in February 2006, we acquired
Atlanet, a Fiat subsidiary providing domestic telecommunications services
to Fiat and other non-Fiat business customers throughout Italy, for approximately €80
million, further reinforcing our position in the Italian market. |
We also
completed a number of smaller acquisitions in the 2006 financial year, including
CW Business Solutions (Cable and Wireless’s retail operation in Spain),
SkyNet Systems (an independent LAN solutions provider focused on the education,
health, local government and media markets), Total Network Solutions, (a provider
of business solutions to UK corporate, public sector and service provider customers)
and Cara Group (a provider of communications solutions to business and public
sector clients in the island of Ireland).
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