July 31 (SeeNews) - Dutch-based telecommunications and media company United Group said on Friday that it has completed the acquisition of Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC), which operates under the Vivacom brand.
"Vivacom established its number one position in Bulgaria with excellent management, impressive financial results, technological advancements, and remarkable team collaboration. With a clear vision and strategy for the future, United Group has acquired another market leader in the region," Victoriya Boklag, United Group's CEO, said in a statement.
You can subscribe to our M&A newsletter here
"For Vivacom, joining the United Group family is a huge opportunity to accelerate the excellent results achieved so far in the Bulgarian market," Atanas Dobrev, CEO of Vivacom, added.
In November last year, United Group said that it has agreed to acquire BTC, which operates under the Vivacom brand, but did not disclose the price of the transaction. Subsequently, the company announced plans to place some 1.795 billion euro ($2.1 billion) worth of bonds to finance the acquisition and refinance existing debt instruments.
The transaction received antitrust clearance from the European Commission in April.
Earlier this month, BTC replaced four members of its supervisory board with two each from and its parent BC Partners, commercial register data shows.
BTC, which has over 1.8 million customers in Bulgaria, competes with A1 Bulgaria, a unit of A1 Telekom Austria, and Telenor Bulgaria, a unit of Czech-owned PPF Group.
Earlier this year, United Group acquired TELE2 Croatia and is currently looking to wrap up the acquisition of the Greece’s pay TV, telecom and internet provider Forthnet.
($ = 0.8438 euro)