HELSINKI, Finland-Telenor’s dream of creating a Scandinavian telecom giant through a merger with Sweden’s Telia and Finland’s Sonera is very much “a live aspiration,” Norway’s Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik told a meeting of government officials in Oslo on 8 July.
The admission came as the European Commission approved, on 10 July, the merger of Telia and Sonera, a much-awaited decision that paves the way for the creation of a Nordic telecom group with annual revenues of more than US$11 million.
The prime minister confirmed that the three Nordic telecom companies arranged to meet in Stockholm “for secret talks” as recently as February to discuss “the ways and means” by which Telenor could join the merger plans. However, this meeting, and unofficial talks since, has proved inconclusive.
“Telia, Telenor and Sonera have met. The arranged meeting involved key board directors from the three companies. It was felt that joining the Nordic merger would be beneficial for Telenor. This is still our view,” Bondevik said. The prime said two meetings were held, the first in January and the second in February.
The government’s admission highlighted the second occasion since 1998 that Telenor tried but failed to participate in a pan-Nordic telecom merger. The previous attempt resulted in the collapse, amid political controversy in Norway and Sweden, of merger talks with Telia in 2000.
Inter-state talks involving Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, his Swedish counterpart Goran Persson and Bondevik on a possible three-way merger, are said to be “active.” The issue was last discussed at the prime ministerial level in April during a meeting of Nordic premiers at the twice yearly Nordic Council Prime Ministers Conference in Oslo.
“The latest merger talks became stranded when the parties involved could not agree on a common industrial platform to take the talks further,” said Telenor Chairman Tom Vidar Rygh.
