Swisscom subsidiary Fastweb may merge with Vodafone Italia

The way is clear for the takeover of Vodafone Italia S.p.A. by the leading Swiss telecoms company Swisscom AG. After the Directorate General for Competition of the EU Commission, the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Swiss Competition Commission had already given their approval on September 23, 2024, the transaction has now received further, pending blessing from Italy. On Friday evening, Swisscom announced the green light from all the relevant authorities that still had to approve the takeover.

These include the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy (Ministero delle Imprese e del Made in Italy), or MIMIT for short. This is a department of the Italian government that deals with industrial, commercial and communication policy. This government body gave its approval by authorizing the change of control of Vodafone Italia as the owner of spectrum licenses, Swisscom announced.

In addition, the unconditional approval by the MIMIT was already given on December 19 after the Italian supervisory authority for communications (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni) and the Italian competition authority (Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato) took note of the approval, according to Swisscom.

Swisscom, 51 percent of which is owned by the Swiss Confederation, is in the process of merging Vodafone Italia with the Milan-based Swisscom subsidiary Fastweb. This will create the second-largest telecoms provider in Italy behind the market leader TIM (Telecom Italia Mobile). Vodafone Italia and Fastweb are a perfect match: While Vodafone Italia has by far the largest market share in mobile telephony, this is lacking at Fastweb, which only has a broadband network, is strong in the fixed network, but has had to buy in mobile capacity to date.

Fastweb with Swisscom for a long time

Swisscom has been in the Italian market with Fastweb for more than 17 years. In 2007, the Swiss took a stake in Fastweb for just under 7 billion Swiss francs (around 4 billion euros at the time), thereby acquiring a large proportion of the company's shares; Swisscom secured the remaining shares in 2010 and 2011 and subsequently delisted Fastweb shares from the Italian stock exchange.

Swisscom now intends to spend eight billion euros on the takeover of Vodafone Italia. The company merged with Fastweb will generate revenues of around EUR 7 billion and employ around 8,000 people. Swisscom itself generated revenues of a good 11 billion Swiss francs in 2023 (currently around 11.929 billion euros). Swisscom expects the transaction to be completed by the first quarter of 2025.

(nen)