By Elvira Pollina
MILAN (Reuters) -Poste Italiane and French telecoms group Iliad are both valid M&A options for Telecom Italia (TIM) to consolidate the Italian telecoms market, the head of the former Italian phone monopoly, Pietro Labriola, said on Thursday.
“From an industrial point of view, as we already said in 2022, Iliad or Poste are the only possibilities for a consolidation,” Labriola told analysts during a post-results conference call. He added he has no preferences at this stage.
State-backed Poste, which mobile telecoms service to retail customers, is expected to hold a board meeting over the weekend to discuss the terms of a potential investment in TIM, three sources close to the matter told Reuters.
Under the scheme being examined, Poste would invest in TIM by taking the 9.8% stake currently held by state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP).
Reuters reported last week that Iliad was exploring a tie-up of its Italian unit with TIM and had met top Italian government officials to inform them of its intentions.
Labriola said that consolidation was essential to repair the Italian telecoms sector, where fierce competition has thinned out operators’ profit margins.
Any tie-up with Iliad would likely provide benefits linked to the combination of the respective mobile network infrastructure, and the need to address antitrust concerns with the sale of some frequencies, said the executive.
A tie-up with Poste, which does not have its own mobile telecoms infrastructure, would likely bring benefits linked to a unified commercial platform, Labriola added.
“But we haven’t assessed in-depth any option yet”, he said, adding he was not involved in any M&A talks in recent weeks.
(Reporting by Elvira Pollina, writing by Alvise Armellini and Elvira Pollina, editing by Gavin Jones and Keith Weir)
