Macquarie Bids for a Piece of Italy’s Open Fiber

The Australian infrastructure fund Macquarie seems to be everywhere these days, and always with a big checkbook in hand. Today the Italian energy utility Enel says it has received a bid from Macquarie Infrastructure & Real Assets for its stake in Open Fiber.

Enel owns 50% of Open Fiber, while the Italian state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti owns the other half. Open Fiber and the rest of the Italian fiber world are in the process of merging. TIM and Fastweb have combined into FiberCop, which later this year is expected to merge with Open Fiber to create a single dark fiber platform called AccessCo upon which the Italian infrastructure world will build from.  The idea is to avoid duplication of efforts in building out assets.

MIRA’s interest in Open Fiber has been evident since early summer when they expressed an interest in Enel’s share. Their current bid is for €2.65B net of debt, which would value Open Fiber at about €7.3B – not far from the €7.7B valuation recently placed on FiberCop. The final entity would command a valuation of €15B. Macquarie and KKR would each own a sizeable minority stake in the entity.

Macquarie is also said to be in the consortium that is preparing to take over GTT’s infrastructure division.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Mergers and Acquisitions