Italian Government Makes Fresh Offer for TIM's Sparkle Subsea Cable Business
By Matthew Gooding, Data Center Dynamics
October 3, 2024
The Italian government has made a fresh €700 million ($774m) bid for Telecom Italia’s (TIM) Sparkle submarine cable unit.
It has joined forces with Retelit SpA, a subsidiary of Spanish investment company Asterion Industrial Partners, to put in a new bid for the firm. TIM has until October 15 to decide whether to accept.
A previous undisclosed offer for Sparkle from the Italian government was rejected in February, with TIM said to be seeking up to €750 million ($807m).
Sparkle operates over 600,000km of cables which connect countries across Europe and the Americas, and Italy is seeking to bring this network under state ownership as part of a plan from Giorgia Meloni’s government to take control of more strategic assets.
TIM has been selling off various parts of its business in recent months. In January, the Italian government approved TIM's planned sale of its fixed line network to KKR, worth €22 billion ($23.92bn).
The operator agreed to sell its landline grid network to US investment firm KKR last November.
It would also appear to be in the acquisitions business, having reportedly made an offer for BT’s Italian assets last month. These include four data centers and a fiber network.