Niel says has ideas on how to improve Telecom Italia - La Stampa - RTRS
MILAN, Dec 18 (Reuters) - French businessman Xavier Niel has some ideas on how to improve Telecom Italia TLIT.MI but will not comment on whether he plans to convert options he bought in the Italian phone group into shares, according to an interview with daily La Stampa.
In the first detailed comments since he invested in options that could hand him a stake in the company of just over 15 percent, Niel said he was an industrial investor in Telecom Italia and not a financial "raider".
He said Telecom Italia was a "fantastic operator with not too bad management", but also had some weaknesses.
"And I have some ideas," he told the paper in an interview published on Friday. "You need to give (Telecom Italia) the capacity to invest to grow both in fibre optic and 4G mobile networks so that it can generate higher revenues but still keep tariffs low."