Kkr carries on and moves towards the approval without “remedies” from the European Commission on the operation to unbundle Tim’s network. The American fund, to avoid the presentation of a package of adjustments, has opted for a sprint of negotiations with Tim’s rival companies. To this end, the main competitors were contacted – including Iliad and Fastweb – to give guarantees on the continuity and conditions of the contracts in place even after the birth of NetCo, both as regards active and passive services. A significant step which is of great interest to the EU Competition Directorate, which at this stage is focused on the possible effects that the network unbundling operation could have on the market. Once the risk of a concentration of the sector has been excluded (which has never been on the table) and an agreement has been reached with the other market players, then the path should be paved towards the green light for Brussels. The fact that KKR has not presented any package of remedies suggests that discussions with alternative operators to Tim, if they have not already been concluded positively, are very well underway. And so one of the best scenarios materializes, that is, that the EU will give the OK to the operation by May 30th and the closing of the transfer of the fixed network from Tim to Kkr, at the head of a consortium which will then also see the Ministry of Economy (with 20%) and the F2i fund (with 10%) join.
Once the operation is concluded, however, another issue will open up which should not be addressed by the EU Antitrust. And this is that of the so-called Master service agreement, i.e. the service contract that will regulate the relationships between NetCo (the company that will have the network in its belly) and the future Tim. At that point the alternative operators could ask the Italian Antitrust to verify that there are not conditions that are too favorable to Tim compared to the others, but this is a question that can be addressed and resolved later and in any case it is not certain that, in the end, elements that hinder competition are indeed identified. It should be remembered, in fact, that during operations of this type it is normal for all operators to try to carve out a space for themselves to obtain better conditions. Yesterday, meanwhile, Tim’s stock – after an initial decline – at the end of the day essentially closed at parity at 0.246 euros per share.
The group led by CEO Pietro Labriola, among other things, today will begin the plan to decommission the copper network to encourage the adoption of new fiber optic technologies and accelerate the digitalization process.
The first step will be the dismantling of the first 62 all-copper power plants located in 54 municipalities in 11 regions. After which, the progressive shutdown of over 6,700 power plants, out of the approximately 10,500 existing ones, is expected by 2028.
