A week has come and gone and there are now no counterbids on the table to buy Italian IPTV operation Fastweb, after its friendly agreed buyout announced by Swisscom.
Both Vodafone and Mediaset have put themselves out of any immediate bidding picture, and they were perhaps the most likely companies to cast an envious eye at Fastweb.
Swisscom said this week that once its €3.7 billion ($4.9 billion) bid for Fastweb is successful it will spend the next few years paying down debt and will not chase any other major acquisitions. Chief Executive Carsten Schloter said that the target would be to get debt down to one times EBITDA.
The comments were measured after local Swiss newspapers had speculated that the company would continue on a spending spree and even cited its Chairman saying that more acquisitions were in the offing, just the sort of comment to scare conservative shareholders like the Swiss government.
Also the company said that Fastweb would keep its Italian listing on the Milan Stock Exchange if some of the share were not tendered, as long as it gets a clear 50% controlling interest. Fastweb is going to retain all of its Italian operations the company said.