Telefonica hires TAP Advisors to work on potential towers spinoff
Spanish telecoms group Telefonica has retained TAP Advisors as it considers options to monetise its phone towers assets, according to a newswire report citing unidentified individuals.
Bloomberg reported that Spain's largest telephone group is drawing up a plan that might result in an initial public offering of the infrastructure, and could include some of its assets in Latin America, Germany as well as Spain.
A final decision has yet to be taken by the EUR 53bn market cap company, it said.
The group is looking to raise funds amid weaker profit growth in Spain and currency weakness in Latin America. Bloomberg said that spinning off the infrastructure assets would follow a similar move made by Telecom Italia earlier in 2015; also, America Movil, owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, set up a separate company in the Spring for its towers business.
The report referred to an earlier article by Bloomberg that tipped Cellnex Telecom as being potentially interested in acquiring some of the Spanish group's portfolio of 60,000 towers