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Swedish communications firm Com Hem up for sale

TT/The Local/vt
TT/The Local/vt - [email protected]
Swedish communications firm Com Hem up for sale
Com Hem spokeswomen Judit & Judit at the On Demand service launch in Stockholm

Swedish television and internet company Com Hem is up for sale and expected to fetch 13 billion ($1.89 billion) to 18 billion kronor, newspaper Dagens Industri (DI) reported on Friday.

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Competitors Telia and Norway's Telenor have been named as the potential buyers, the report said. Telia was Com Hem's previous owner, but sold the unit to appease the EU in its bid to merge with Sonera in 2003.

Private equity firm EQT Partners, which is owned by the Wallenberg family-controlled Investor, bought Com Hem for 2 billion kronor and sold it to American asset management firms The Carlyle Group and Providence Equity Partners two years later for 10 billion kronor.

Com Hem currently has about 650 employees in Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Västerås and Härnösand. Other interested buyers in the company include former Danish telecommunications monopoly TDC and Swedish telecommunications operators Tele2 and 3, DI reported.

According to DI, Telia has contacted the EU anti-competition authorities to investigate the possibility of bringing Com Hem back into the fold.

Com Hem supplies triple play services that include cable and digital television, broadband, telephony and HDTV. The company now offers nearly 62 different television channels. It reaches a third of all Swedish households.

The company ranked as the television brand with the least satisfied customers in Sweden in 2007, 2008 and 2009, according to the Swedish Quality Index (Svenskt Kvalitetsindex), an independent customer survey company.

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