UPDATE: Telecom Italia Still Reviewing Options For TV Asset
December 09 2010 - 8:51AM
Dow Jones News
Telecom Italia SpA (TIT.MI) is still reviewing its options for
its television channel La7, the chief executive of the Italian
telecommunications operator said Thursday.
"The review is still going on just as it is for all the other
assets," Franco Bernabe said, on the margins of a news conference
about a deal with a second Italian publisher--RCS Mediagroup SpA
(RCS.MI)--to sell content on the operator's online store.
"We are satisfied with La7 which is going well," he said,
according to MF-Dow Jones. "Its (market) share has risen so we are
happy to have this stake."
Shares in Telecom Italia Media SpA (TME.MI), the operator's
partially owned subsidiary to which La7 belongs, were off 0.78% at
EUR0.24 in Milan.
On Tuesday, Telecom Italia denied a local news report that it
had hired a bank to help it sell Telecom Italia Media or at least
20% of it.
Telecom Italia owns nearly 70% of Telecom Italia Media, which
also runs the MTV television channel in Italy, among other
activities.
"Reviewing options can mean either the sale or the development
(of the business) so Bernabe's words don't clear up the situation
very much," a Milan trader said. "I don't expect a spin-off in the
short term."
At the news conference, Bernabe announced a deal with RCS to
sell virtual versions of the media group's books and newspapers at
Biblet, an online store run by Telecom Italia.
The store will offer more than 650 e-books as well as digital
editions of Corriere della Sera and La Gazzetta dello Sport, two of
Italy's biggest newspapers.
Consumers will be able to download them onto devices such as
tablets, including the Olipad, a device to be brought to market in
the coming months by Olivetti, a unit of Telecom Italia.
Telecom Italia entered into a similar deal with Arnoldo
Mondadori Editore SpA (MN.MI), another Italian publisher.
-Alberto Chimenti, MF-Dow Jones; Gilles Castonguay, Dow Jones
Newswires, +39 02 5821 9908; gilles.castonguay@dowjones.com
(Paola Longo of MF-Dow Jones contributed to this article.)
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