Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – The court of appeal in Warsaw forbid to sell the stake in Polkomtel telecom. Vodafone paid EUR 43m of deposit to have it granted.
On October 16th, the court of appeal in Warsaw restated the decision to block the sale of Polkomtel shares. The British Vodafone wanted such a solution in order to make it impossible for Danish TDC to sell its 19.61 percent stake in the operator of Plus and Sami Swoi mobile networks.
“The arbitrary proceeding is going on and we are sure we are right”, Ben Padovan, Vodafone spokesman said.
The shares are secured until the international arbitrary center in Vienna decides in another case started by Vodafone which may last much longer (the first hearing is due on January 7th).
“Vodafone made the things more complicated and longer, which adversely affects the other shareholders. We hope that the case will be concluded soon”, Jesper Theill Eriksen, TDC Mobile International CEO said.
Vodafone had to pay EUR 43m of bail. The court said it was not too much, especially that TDC evaluated its stake in Polkomtel at EUR 861m.
Now, the Polish shareholders will not buy the stake from TDC although they want to do it very much and have already signed a preliminary agreement to do it.
“All shareholders aim at buying TDC shares. We won’t make any decisions before the arbitrary proceeding is over, however, because it’s too risky”, Henryk Baranowski, the deputy CEO of PSE, one of the Polish shareholders, said.