Spark sells Cook Islands Telecom stake for $23m
Digicel deal falls through under political pressure, but stake offloaded to locals for the same price.
Spark it has sold its 60% interest in Telecom Cook Islands, the incumbent telecommunications provider in the Cook Islands, for $23 million a consortium of local investors called Teleraro. The Cook Islands goverment has retained its 40% stake.
New Spark boss Simon Moutter says it's part of a part of his policy of re-focusing on the NZ market.
Spark (then branded as Telecom) first announced the sale of its Telecom Cook Islands stake in April last year. At the time it had a deal lined up with Digicel, which operates around the Pacific and Carribean.
A Spark insider tells NBR that politics came into play, with a local buyer preferred over Digicel (which was also offering $23 million).
According to a Cook Islands News report, the sale followed a minor barney over whether Teleraro (75 per cent directly owned by the foreign entity, Bluesky Samoa), could in fact be considered a local outfit. The deal went through regardless.
Spark bought into Cook Islands Telecom in 1991, paying $4 million (or an inflation-adjusted $6.5 million) for its stake.
“The sale of Telecom Cook Islands is consistent with this strategy and with our desire to focus principally on our New Zealand operations and on the needs of New Zealand customers,” says Spark MD Simon Moutter.
On a larger scale, Mr Moutter's re-focus on the domestic market has also seen the sale of Spark's AAPT subsidiary in Australia and Spark Digital (formerly Gen-i) withdraw from the Australian market.
Chris Keall
Mon, 23 Feb 2015
Mon, 23 Feb 2015
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Spark sells Cook Islands Telecom stake for $23m
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