EC gives green light to Vivacom acquisition

The European Commission has approved the sale of Bulgarian Telecommunications Company (BTC), aka Vivacom, to the Dutch-based telecommunications and media company United Group. Please recall that the deal was expected to close in Q2’20. So far no delay is expected, despite the current issue with Covid-19 worldwide. Vivacom is the largest telecommunications company in Bulgaria with a total of 3.1m mobile subscribers, 689k fixed telephony subscribers, 468k pay-TV subscribers, 444k fixed broadband subscribers, EUR 484.7m revenue and EUR 184m of adjusted EBITDA at the end of December 2018. United Group tentatively valued the acquisition at EUR 1.3bn and intends to finance it with debt.