'Telecom sells strategic assets after negotiations | BIRN'

Telekom, the telecom operator, has been preparing for months to sell most of its most important antenna towers and related infrastructure, including transformer substations, solar panels and plots of land. A total of 1,827 such towers will be sold, of which 995 are in Serbia, 725 in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 107 in Montenegro.

The British company Actis GP LLP is buying these towers. It will receive money from, among others, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a lending organization of the World Bank. The decision to invest $75 million to buy Telekom's property is to be made by the IFC board after the Serbian elections on December 18. The sale has been in preparation since the end of last year.

Actis has been involved in an extensive process''auction, and after several rounds was selected as the preferred bid until June 2023, after which Actis started bilateral negotiations with Telekom Serbia. The project, called Balkan Towers, was published a few days ago, on November 16. The process of selling Telekom's strategic assets in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina was conducted in secret to the residents of these countries, and the price was a secret to the public.

"The sale will be financed by a combination of equity and bank debt. The purchase price is commercially sensitive and will not be disclosed at this stage," IFC wrote on its website.

The plan is that after the sale Telekom will rent these same antenna towers for the installation of base stations and pay Actis for it. Telekom Serbia will be obliged to rent the new towers built by Actis. "We have taken loans for the construction of base stations, especially valuable ones are those,'''which are 4G, we have maintained the antenna towers. After we sell the antenna towers, we will still have to pay loans for the base stations and we will pay to rent antenna towers for them,' says a source close to Telekomu.