Orange Group and Spain’s Másmovil announced over the weekend that they have signed a binding agreement to combine their respective operations in Spain, creating a new fixed-mobile telecom heavyweight that will pose a challenge to market leader Telefónica.
The merged entity is valued at €18.6 billion (US$19 billion), based on valuations of €7.8 billion ($8 billion) for Orange Spain and €10.9 billion ($11.12 billion) for Másmovíl, which is owned by London-based Lorca JVCO.
The two groups first revealed that they had entered into discussions on a potential merger on March 8. Reports suggested that negotiations had stalled over financing issues. However, Másmovíl and Orange have now confirmed that they secured a crucial loan of €6.6 billion ($6.7 billion) from “a large pool of banks” to cover the costs of the merger. This includes a €4.2 billion upstream payment to Orange to “reflect the different levels of indebtedness” of the two businesses.
