EE, Britain's largest mobile operator, is now undertaking plans to prepare for its initial public offering. Its owners, France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom are now lining up banks to oversee the IPO.
For France Telecom, it has chosen Morgan Stanly and Bank of America Merill Lynch for advisory services while Deutsche Telekom has tapped JP Morgan for the sale. EE was formed as a joint venture between the two telecommunications giants of Europe, where JP Morgan provided the advisory services for the 50-50 joint venture.
Many private equity firms such as KKR and CVC Capital Partners have been busy putting up the funds for the purchase, which is estimated between GBP9 billion and GBP10 billion. While a buyout of this size is pretty ambitions for any one private equity firm, the growing interest from industry players as well as other investors may eventually shape the IPO plan in the future.
Both telecom giants declined to provide any comment on the future plans of EE. Their last joint statement on the matter was it was conducting 'a strategic review on the asset to consider different options, with an IPO as the preferred option.'
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