The British background Zegona has closed the purchase of the subsidiary of Vodafone in Spain for 5,000 million euros. This company, listed on the London Stock Exchange, was founded in 2015with the objective of invest in companies in the European telecommunications sectormedia and technology, led by two former executives of the British telecommunications company Virgin Media, Eamonn O’Hare and Robart Samuelson.
This company functions as a empty shell, closing their investments only with debt. On this occasion, he has managed to get the banks Deutsche Bank, ING, and UniCredi to grant him a loan of more than 4,000 million, to which must be added another almost 1,000 million that Vodafone lends in exchange for preferred shares. Now, Zegona must launch a capital increase that allows you to cancel a part of these liabilities. The agreement between Vodafone and Zegona includes using their brand for a period of ten years, which may be extended to other matters such as operator services, the internet of things or the roaming.
Zegona, present in Spain since 2015
Although Zegona is now carrying out its largest operation in Spain, it is not unknown in the country. In 2015, the fund bought the Asturian cable company Telecable for 640 million euros. Only two years later, the Basque Euskaltel integrated the Zegona company into its organizational chart, maintaining a 15% stake, which it finally divested in 2021. In that year, MoreMobile launched a public acquisition offer (takeover bid) for 2,000 million euros, which was accepted by almost all of Euskatel’s shareholders.
Between 2016 and 2017, Zegona also tried to buy Yoigo and negotiated the operation exclusively with the Swedish company TeliaSonera, which controlled more than 75% of the shares. The rest was in the hands of ACS, FCC and Abengoa. Finally, it was MásMóvil that ended up closing the operation for 612 million euros.