Telecom Italia Media shareholders have approved Telecom Italia’s plan to buy out minority investors and take full control of the company.
The Italian incumbent already owns 77.71% of Telecom Italia Media. In February it offered to swap 0.66 of its ordinary shares for every outstanding Telecom Italia Media ordinary share, and 0.47 of its savings shares for every outstanding Telecom Italia Media ordinary share.
"The merger operation is planned to take effect for statutory purposes in the third quarter of 2015," said Telecom Italia Media, in a statement late on Thursday.
The integration will rationalise and simplify Telecom Italia’s group structure, the telco said in February, as well as eliminate Telecom Italia Media’s listing costs. These costs can no longer be justified since the firm’s assets consist solely of its majority stake in digital terrestrial TV (DTTV) broadcaster Persidera.
Indeed, Telecom Italia Media pared back its operations considerably in 2013 with the March sale of its TV channel La7 to media group Cairo Communication. That was followed by the sale in July of MTV Italia to Viacom.
Then in April 2014, Telecom Italia Media agreed to merge its DTT business with that of Gruppo Espresso, creating Persidera.
