Iliad / Alice

Alice France, the ISP owned by Telecom Italia (TI), is to be acquired by Iliad, the listed French telecommunications group, for around EUR 800m, reported Les Echos.

The unsourced report said that exclusive talks between seller Telecom Italia and Iliad will be announced this morning. Iliad owns Free, a French internet provider, and Free will acquire the 950,000 ADSL subscribers of Alice, the report said.

For 2007 Alice reported turnover of EUR 394m with an operational loss of EUR 191m. By merging Alice with the Iliad operations, this must be turned into profitability, the report said. Iliad had net debts of EUR 115m at the end of 2007 so this buy will be financed by new debts, the report noted.

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