Iliad, owned by Xavier Niel, entered the mobile telephony market in Italy in 2018 and claims a 10.5% market share there.
In this country where the incumbent operator Telecom Italia is attacked by competitors with aggressive pricing, Iliad also entered the fixed telephony market last January.
The French group is targeting a turnover of one billion euros in 2022 in Italy, after having recorded in the third quarter of 2021 revenues up 20.9% to 207 million euros.
By acquiring Vodafone Italia, Iliad would control more than a third of the mobile market in Italy and would post a combined turnover of almost 6 billion euros.
Vodafone Italia, which has a market share of 28.8% in mobile and 16% in fixed, posted revenues of 4.5 billion euros in its staggered financial year, which ended in March 2021.
Founded in 1999, the parent company of the operator Free is present in France, Italy and Poland through the operator Play.
Sixth-largest European mobile operator by number of subscribers, Iliad has 42.7 million subscribers and generated a turnover of 5.9 billion euros in 2020.
The operation is part of a context where several managers of European operators have called for the consolidation of the market on the continent to reduce competition and increase their profitability, at a time when they are investing heavily in the deployment of 5G and the optical fiber.
Telecom Italia is also the subject of a takeover proposal by the American investment fund KKR, which declared itself ready in November to put 10.8 billion euros on the table to acquire the entire capital of the incumbent operator.
The fund is still awaiting a response from Tim to its request for access to its accounts for an in-depth audit, the so-called classic "due diligence" phase, before launching a takeover bid.
© 2022 AFP