[Maui Company To Buy GST's Hawaiian Operations]
x-changemag.com
GST Telecommunications Inc. has reached a tentative agreement to sell its Hawaiian operations to MBN Communications Inc., for $75 million, people close to the company say. The sources report that the sale should close in the next month, pending due diligence.
A GST spokesman declined to comment on the pending sale, but confirmed that GST has been negotiating with a potential buyer, and that the negotiations have gone on for some time. The company announced last year that it expected to sell the Hawaiian operations by the end of 1999. "The delay has been on [the buyer's] end, not ours," the spokesman says.
"I'd have to say I have no comment at this time," says Timothy Georges, MBN's CFO. "But as soon as we are at a place where we can talk, we'll talk."
According to documents on the website of the Hawaii Bureau of Business Registration (www.state.hi.us/dcca/breg-seu), MBN was formed last summer and is headquartered in Kihei, the county seat of Maui County, Maui.
Sources knowledgeable about GST and MBN say MBN will be financed by AMP Ltd. (www.amplimited.com), the Australian financial services company. AMP did not return phone calls. AMP owns 90 percent of WCI Cable Inc. (www.wcic.com), which operates a long-haul fiber optic network, terrestrial and submarine, between the Pacific northwest and Alaska. Sources say that WCI would provide the operational expertise for the Hawaiian company.
For more than a year, GST has been shedding what its management refers to as "non-core assets." The company's Hawaiian operations, which include an ISP and a CLEC operation, have long been considered the biggest single non-core asset. |
