English"France Telecom" SA, Europe"s third largest telecom company, has decided to merge its Swiss division with the local division of Danish company TDC A/S, by paying EUR 1.5 billion (USD 2.25 billion) to control the newly created entity.
Thus, "Orange" Switzerland will merge with "Sunrise Communications" SA. "France Telecom" will hold a 75% stake in the new company, with TDC - holding 25%. The merger of "Orange" and "Sunrise Communications", ranked second and third on the Swiss mobile telephony market (after "Swisscom" AG), will save over EUR 2.1 billion. The new group will have a market share of 38% of the Swiss mobile telephony segment and 13% of the high speed internet access segment.
The deal is expected to complete in Q2 2010. The new entity will be led by Thomas Sieber, the current general manager of "Orange" Switzerland, and will have around 3.4 million users of mobile telephony.
In September, "France Telecom" and German "Deutsche Telekom" AG announced the merger of their British divisions: "Orange" and "T-Mobile".
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