TeliaSonera’s drive to dominate the Baltic telecom sector has moved forward, with carrier wresting majority ownership of Estonia’s Eesti Telekom and gaining 68% control of Lithuania’s TEO.
“Our strategy is to increase our ownership in our core holdings and this was achieved both in TEO LT and Eesti Telekom. Our offer was obviously more successful in Estonia as we did not get as far in Lithuania, which is partly due to a different shareholder structure. Still we managed to increase our ownership which is very positive,” said TeliaSonera executive VP and CFO Per-Arne Blomquist.
After the successful completion of the cash offer for all outstanding shares in Eesti Telekom, TeliaSonera will initiate a squeeze-out process for the remaining shares that it does not yet own.
Blomquist said that the Nordic giant was committed to developing Eesti Telekom and its subsidiaries to maintain their high brand value and leading market positions through continued investments.
TeliaSonera is part-owned by the Swedish and Finnish governments and in recent months, has looked to eastern Europe, Russia and Asia for growth as its home markets mature.