Zegona Communications is about to acquire at least 50% of the shares of Vodafone Spain. According to Bloomberg, the company already has the necessary financing to buy the securities, for which it would pay just over 5,000 million euros. Both parties are apparently finalizing the last points of the purchase agreement, and the announcement, which will occur when these last issues are already resolved, may only occur in a few hours.
Of course, according to several sources, the negotiations for the operation, which has definitively left behind offers from other entities, could still take a few days. And as usually happens in these cases, even if they are very advanced, they can break, as has happened with those that were being carried out for the merger between Western Digital and Kioxia.
Vodafone has been trying for more than a year to reach an agreement for the sale of its Spanish subsidiary. If not all of it, at least most of its titles. Before that, the CEO of the British operator, Margherita Della Valle, had reduced the weight of Vodafone Spain among its subsidiaries, since its results have not been as satisfactory as they seek for some time. Thus, Vodafone Spain is now included in a group that includes all the smaller European divisions.
The company has also been working with an external advisor for some time in evaluating the options it has for its Spanish division. Since then there are several entities that have shown some interest in acquiring it. Among those who were considering making an offer to keep her is Warburg Pincus. Apollo Global Management even showed interest in Vodafone, but withdrew from its purchase at a very early stage.
In September, Vodafone finally acknowledged that it was negotiating with Zegona about a potential sale of its Spanish subsidiary. They have not been the only ones interested in it in recent weeks, since a group of investors, with RRJ Capital, was seriously considering making an offer for Vodafone’s assets in Spain.
Zegona, who defines herself as an entity dedicated to buying companies and solving their problems and then selling them, has on other occasions played a prominent role in the telecommunications sector in Spain, one of the most competitive in Europe. Founded in 2015 by Eamon O’Hare, a former director of Virgin Media, it bought the operator Euskaltel some time ago, which it later sold to MasMovil.
