Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris is looking to get his hands on Telecom Italia via a US$3.9 billion cash infusion, according to a Reuters report. If successful in his bid for control, he would look to expand Telecom Italia's interests in Brazil, the report adds. Sawiris used to own Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA, Italy's third-largest mobile operator.
Meanwhile, back at the coalface, Telecom Italia is to deploy Gemalto's MFS contactless payments software as the backbone of its "mobile wallet" launch. (See Telecom Italia Deploys Gemalto.)
Pan-European network operator Interoute is to boost its presence in Northern Europe with the acquisition of Comendo Network, a subsidiary of Danish IT company Comendo. The deal is valued at up to €7 million ($9 million), with Interoute paying €4.5 million ($5.8 million) in cash initially and up to €2.5 million ($3.2 million) more, depending on the performance of the business during the next year or so.
NTC Holding, the largest shareholder in TDC A/S, is selling a 10 percent stake in the national Danish operator, reports Marketwatch. Following the divestment, NTC will be left with a 33 percent stake in TDC.
It seems MegaFon's imminent initial public offering (IPO) in London will be a soaraway success, with Reuters reporting that the over-subscribed order book will close at 2 p.m. GMT on Tuesday.
France is the latest country to peer more closely into the tax arrangements of Google, Apple Inc. and others, reports Bloomberg. The government there is considering tweaking the tax laws next year to prevent it missing out on much-needed revenues.
As predicted in these pages earlier this month, the BBC reports that YouView TV Ltd., the company behind a much-trumpeted TV catch-up service backed by the BBC and others, has been sued for trademark infringement by Total, a little-known U.K. telco that had previously registered the name "YourView."
— Paul Rainford, Assistant Editor, Europe, Light Reading
Currently we allow the following HTML tags in comments:
Single tags
These tags can be used alone and don't need an ending tag.
<br> Defines a single line break
<hr> Defines a horizontal line
Matching tags
These require an ending tag - e.g. <i>italic text</i>
<a> Defines an anchor
<b> Defines bold text
<big> Defines big text
<blockquote> Defines a long quotation
<caption> Defines a table caption
<cite> Defines a citation
<code> Defines computer code text
<em> Defines emphasized text
<fieldset> Defines a border around elements in a form
<h1> This is heading 1
<h2> This is heading 2
<h3> This is heading 3
<h4> This is heading 4
<h5> This is heading 5
<h6> This is heading 6
<i> Defines italic text
<p> Defines a paragraph
<pre> Defines preformatted text
<q> Defines a short quotation
<samp> Defines sample computer code text
<small> Defines small text
<span> Defines a section in a document
<s> Defines strikethrough text
<strike> Defines strikethrough text
<strong> Defines strong text
<sub> Defines subscripted text
<sup> Defines superscripted text
<u> Defines underlined text
Network Computing encourages readers to engage
in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task.
However, Network Computing moderates all comments posted to our site,
and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory,
offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM.
Network Computing further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating
in said activities.
