Portugal Telecom’s shareholders on Thursday gave the go-ahead to a deal that will see France’s Altice take control of the telco’s Portuguese assets.
The majority of those represented at the meeting voted in favour of the deal, Portugal Telecom said in a statement.
The decision marks the end of a controversial few weeks for the Portuguese incumbent, which was forced to delay the shareholder vote earlier this month after Portugal’s securities market regulator claimed it had failed to provide relevant information about the deal that was necessary to enable shareholders to make an informed decision.
The deal in question will see Oi sell Portugal Telecom’s domestic and Hungarian assets to Altice for €7.4 billion, as agreed in December. As a result of an ongoing merger between them, Portugal Telecom is now a 25.6% shareholder in Oi and no longer has control of its legacy assets, although at this stage its shareholders still had the power to block the deal.
The shareholder vote is good news for Oi, which is keen to push on with the sale. The Brazilian telco plans to use the proceeds to kick off consolidation in its domestic market, most likely by brokering a takeover or merger deal with Telecom Italia’s local unit TIM Brasil.
Oi noted that the sale of the Portuguese business is still subject to a corporate restructuring that will formally separate out the a ssets to be divested and Portugal Telecom’s controversial Rioforte debt that will not form part of the transaction.
In a separate announcement, Oi confirmed the appointment of Bayard De Paoli Gontijo as its permanent CEO.
Finance chief Gontijo has been acting chief executive since Zeinal Bava resigned in October, when news of Altice’s interest in the Portuguese business broke.
Bava was the architect of the Oi/Portugal Telecom merger. While the sale of assets does not legally derail the tie-up, it does remove the operational synergies; with the Portuguese assets gone, Oi will focus solely on its home market.
