Salt Mobile considering filing a suit against Sunrise over $7.4bn Liberty deal
Xavier Niel’s mobile telecoms group argues that sale is in breach of exclusivity arrangement
Salt Mobile, the Swiss telecoms company owned by French billionaire Xavier Niel, is considering whether to sue its rival Sunrise after it claimed that a $7.4bn deal for John Malone’s Liberty Global to acquire that company would be in breach of an exclusivity agreement.
Salt has appointed US law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which has filed proceedings in the US to obtain “any relevant information” related to the transaction, it said on Thursday.
Both it and Sunrise had signed an exclusive bilateral agreement in May to co-invest in fibre networks in Switzerland to better compete with Swisscom and Liberty Global’s Swiss cable unit UPC.
However Sunrise agreed to sell itself to Liberty Global earlier this month. Salt said in a statement on Thursday that the takeover “infringes on contractual rights” as part of their fibre deal.
André Krause, chief executive of Sunrise, told the Financial Times that he believed Salt did not have any grounds to sue as the exclusivity deal excluded a public tender offer. He added that Sunrise had not solicited the offer from Liberty Global.
“We cannot see why we have breached that agreement,” he said.
Liberty Global declined to immediately comment.
It is the latest twist in the saga of Swiss telecoms consolidation after a previous deal that would have seen Sunrise acquire Liberty Global’s UPC was scuppered by its own shareholders.