The Brookfield Foundation appears to be one of those interested in acquiring control ofcellcom and this after the fund expressed its willingness to enter into negotiations with the controlling owners Discount investments . The Brookfield Fund manages investments on a very wide scale all over the world and recently decided to enter Israel and is backed by the HSBC investment bank.
It was learned that the investment bank Barclays began the process of finding an investor to purchase Cellcom and in the process the Canadian investment fund Brookfield expressed interest in the purchase of Cellcom. Barclays had already begun to organize the stage of presentations to investors and the opening of information rooms, but during the process a reference was received from the Brookfield Foundation and it was decided to try and exhaust the negotiations with them.
Due to the fund’s extensive investments, the acquisition of the controlling interest in Cellcom can be complex for it, since it will require approval from the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Defense. Let’s recall that in the past the acquisition of control of a cellular company for companies that have investments in Arab countries was met with opposition from the security establishment.
Brookfield tried a few months ago to make a deal with Cellcom to purchase its cellular sites and re-lease them to the company, and this as part of an attempt by the controlling owners of Cellcom, DSKSH, to find a solution to the debt problem for their bond holders. The deal exploded following opposition from the workers’ council.
Since then it seems that the company continues to look for investments in Israel and the fact that Cellcom has been put up for sale creates an opportunity for the fund to acquire the company and then finance it through a deal to lease its cellular sites.
We will only emphasize that until now no economic viability has been found for transactions in the worlds of the towers, not only due to objections from workers’ committees, but mainly because it is a purely financial transaction, one that flows money to the shareholders and solves their liquidity problems, and on the other hand, it is also not viable due to the relatively small scope of activity of the field and the need to do a deal with two cellular companies at the same time to justify it financially.
Recently, the controlling owners of Cellcom sold shares amounting to 9.9% of the company in exchange for NIS 313 million, and decreased their holdings in the company, with the aim of facilitating the process of selling control.