Britain's BT Group to buy US Infonet for 965 mln dollars

LONDON (AFP) - British telecoms operator BT Group said it had agreed to buy Californian voice and data network service provider Infonet Services Corp for 965 million dollars (744 million euros).
BT is offering 2.06 dollars per share to the stockholders of Infonet, which include Dutch Royal KPN NV, Swedish-Finnish TeliaSonera AB, Spain's Telefonica SA, Swisscom AG, KDDI Corp of Japan and Telstra of Australia.
This represents a premium of 23 percent to the average price of Infonet shares over the past three months.
Shareholders representing 97 percent of Infonet's voting share capital have committed to support the transaction, BT said.
BT said the deal will "greatly extend" its global reach and will deepen the company's presence in North America and Asia Pacific.
It added that it sees cash synergies of 150 million dollars in the third year following the acquisition.
"The transaction is expected to be cashflow neutral for BT in the first year following acquisition and positive thereafter," the company said.
"In the first year it will be dilutive to BT's net earnings by around 0.5 pence per share; thereafter it will be accretive," it added.

11/08/2004 - 09:25 GMT - AFP