The sale of Telecom Argentina to the Fintech group, fund owned by billionaire David Martinez Guzman, has been postponed due to the serious financial situation of the South American country, which in these hours has been forced to declare its second default in less than 14 years. The negotiation, which should have ended by August 12, will be postponed to August 5, when the question will arrive on the table of the Telecom Italia board of directors.
Fintech would be interested in renegotiating, downwards, the contract stipulated with Telecom Italia which saw a concession by the Guzman group of 960 million. Now the scenarios that open up are potentially two. In the first case, a simple postponement in the short term is envisaged with the aim of perfecting the agreement already discussed. A more radical hypothesis would be that of a complete re-discussion of the entire sales process.
For now, there are only the 108,7 million dollars on the table that Fintch had already sold to Telecom Italia on the occasion of the sale of 1,58% of the Telecom subsidiary in Argentina. Its control, however, had remained in the hands of the Italian parent company, through the intermediary of 68% of Sofora - the holding company that heads the corporate chain that leads to Telecom Argentina.
Solution not found yesterday in American bondholders and the Argentine government, begins to weigh, just 24 hours later, on the financial movements linked to the South American country. Those of Telecom Italia are the first to pay the price, as they find themselves selling a product – the Argentinean section of the company – no longer attractive to investors precisely because of the bankruptcy of Kirchner's country.
