The National Property Fund said that information (reported by the MFDnes newspaper) that the number of bidders has narrowed down to only three consortia is speculative. An NPF spokesperson said none of the seven short-listed bidders had withdrawn. MFDnes reported on Monday that the only consortia remaining in the tender were Deutsche Telekom/Deutsche Bank, Swisscom/CVC Capital Partners/Spectrum Equity Partners, and OTE/Doughty Henson/Warburg Pincus/Apax Partners. Neutral.
Separately, Cesky Telecom rejected allegations raised by the head of the CTU (the domestic telecom regulator) that the company not ready to support the launch of call-by-call choice of operator on its fixed-line network in July 2002, as required by the telecoms law. The regulator also said that it would not allow Cesky Telecom to raise local calling rates after the renumbering of telephone lines unless actual data support such an increase. The renumbering, scheduled for September this year, will be accompanied be the enlargement of local-call areas, and Cesky Telecom has suggested this may reduce its revenues and justifies an increase in the local-call price. This is somewhat negative news, but we do not expect an impact on the stock price.
(Ondrej Datka)