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To: slacker711 who wrote (19315)	4/3/2002 11:23:10 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 34857

<<Any candidates?>> None that I could speculate right now. But it will eventually surface. If Telesp execute its act well they can get a head start difficult to beat.

To: slacker711 who wrote (19315)	4/3/2002 1:09:57 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 34857

BellSouth, Safra break Brazil BCP debt deadlock By Reuters staff 03 April 2002 BellSouth's Brazilian mobile venture reaches agreement on restructuring of US$2.1 bn of debt. The head of Brazil's Safra bank said on Tuesday its shareholders had accepted a proposal by U.S. phone company BellSouth Corp. to end a deadlock on the nonpayment of debt by their Brazilian mobile phone venture BCP. "We evaluated the proposals and sent an acceptance of one of them, but it is confidential," Safra bank president Carlos Alberto Vieira told Reuters. "All I can say is that they are proposals to find a good solution to the problems of BCP." The shareholders of Safra bank, part of the Safra family financial empire that includes banks in the United States, Switzerland and Luxembourg, control Verbier, a group which owns 44.5 percent of BCP. BellSouth also owns 44.5 percent. BCP became the first Brazilian phone company to default on a debt since the sector was privatized in 1998 when it missed payment of US$375 million due creditors on Thursday. BellSouth's demands to restructure the mobile company's debt before paying off any maturities was at the heart of the default. Verbier was ready to pay its portion of BCP's debt, but BellSouth refused. Earlier, BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher told Reuters the U.S. company had sent Verbier several proposals in the last 24 hours to restructure the Sao Paulo cellphone operator's debt. "BellSouth is interested in the long-term viability and financial health of the business," he said. "Putting in cash without a total restructure of the debt will not solve the problem." BCP has a total debt of about 4.8 billion reais (US$2.1 billion). Ratings agency Standard & Poor's said BCP was in default on Thursday after failing to pay off US$375 million in bonds held by a syndicate of banks. BCP had declined comment on the default, saying only that it was waiting for BellSouth to provide a solution. Analysts say BCP's debt problem began at the company's conception in 1997 when it borrowed to pay a hefty US$1.1 billion for a license to operate mobile services in Sao Paulo, Brazil's richest and most populous state. The dollar-linked debt load grew more weighty in 1999 as it was magnified by a 30 percent-plus devaluation of the Brazilian currency, the real. The real's 16 percent depreciation in 2001 made matters worse despite analysts' belief that the company is doing well at an operating level. BCP competes with Brazil's biggest mobile phone operator Telesp Celular, which is controlled by Portugal Telecom.(US$1 = 2.3 reais)

To: slacker711 who wrote (19315)	4/4/2002 8:46:04 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 34857

Candidates to buy BCP: BCP may enter into a joint venture with Telecom America. I think its BCP's natural path. Telecom America is backed by Bell Canada and Telmex and owns 4 Band B licenses in Brazil: ATL, TESS, AMERICELL and TELET. Only lacking is the Sao Paulo region where BCP operates. TESS was once offered to BCP, Banco Safra, -owned by the Safra bothers; vetoed the purchase. Until recently, there had been discussions about a joint venture with Telecom America but again the Safra brothers were against it. Relationship between BellSouth and Banco Safra hasn't been good for over a year. The deadlock in the payment of the USD345million was a result of the poor relationship between the shareholders. Also BCP is trying to push creditors and suppliers to negotiate better terms. It also serves as a signal to the regulator, ANATEL, that not everything is well with wireless in Brazil.