FOCUS-NTT says Docomo not preparing Orange bid
(pulls together early stories from Tokyo, London)
By Richard Baum
LONDON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The list of potential buyers for British mobile operator Orange Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: ORA.L) appeared to narrow on Wednesday when Japanese telecoms giant NTT denied a subsidiary was preparing a bid for the company.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) President Junichiro Miyazu played down a report that NTT Docomo wanted to buy Orange from Vodafone Airtouch Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: VOD.L), following Vodafone's takeover of Mannesmann AG .
``I've got nothing to say because they're not doing anything,' Miyazu told journalists in Tokyo who asked about the report in Britain's Sunday Business. ``I haven't heard anything from Docomo but I don't think they have done anything like that.'
His comments left France Telecom and Dutch company KPN Telekom as the front runners to bid for the company.
Banking sources say France Telecom is lining up a loan to bid for the group, Britain's third biggest mobile phone company, while KPN has said it is also interested. Analysts say MCI Worldcom Inc (NasdaqNM:WCOM - news) may be too.
Vodafone has offered to demerge Orange, recently bought by Mannesmann, to placate competition regulators, and there is speculation it would attract a bid soon after it was listed on the stock exchange. The European Commission may instead force Vodafone to seek a trade sale.
Meanwhile, the London Stock Exchange announced extraordinary measures to deal with an anticipated avalanche of trade in Vodafone when it declares its offer unconditional.
The declaration, which Vodafone has said it expects to make this week once it receives acceptances from more than 50 percent of Mannesmann shareholders, will trigger a stampede by fund managers to reweight their portfolios to reflect Vodafone's increased capitalisation.
Because Vodafone's closing price on that day will determine its new weighting in FTSE indices, the exchange expects fund managers will wait until late in the day to trade so they can buy the stock as near as possible to the closing price.
It will therefore extend the period in which it calculates Vodafone's official closing price, the Volume Weighted Average Price (VWAP), from the last 10 minutes of trade to the last 30.
Index compiler FTSE International said it will increase Vodafone's weighting two days after the offer goes unconditional, to a level the market expects to be around 15 percent of the FTSE 100. German stock exchange Deutsche Borse will at the same time remove Mannesmann from the DAX 30 index, FTSE said.
Mannesmann shares fell 7.5 percent on news of the DAX move, which dashed speculation that untendered shares may remain in the index. Vodafone dropped 8.8 percent in response as arbitrageurs continued to dominate trading in the shares. |
