Former Free National Movement (FNM) Cabinet Minister Tennyson Wells yesterday said that former owners of Bahamas Telecommunications Company ( BTC), Cable and Wireless, sold the company for eight times more than it had bought the company for.
Mr. Wells, appearing as a guest on Love 97’s Issues of the Day, said that when Cable and Wireless bought BTC, back in 2011, they had purchased it for only $200 million.
However, last year, Cable and Wireless sold BTC to Liberty Global for a total of $1.2 billion.
Despite that huge profit, Mr. Wells asserted that BTC has not actually progressed technologically.
“We got worse service now in 2016, than we had in 2011, and it’s worth eight times more.,” said Mr. Wells.
“They left the Bahamian people hanging with a pension liability to all those people which I understand is now $100 million . They left a certain amount of money in the bank. That BTC kept, and I think about $60 million that was there then,” said Mr. Wells.
Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries last year said spoke optimistically about his company’s purchase of BTC.
“The acquisition of Cable & Wireless represents a watershed moment for our recently created LiLAC platform. It will add significant scale and management depth to our fast-growing operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, while creating a new regional consumer and B2B powerhouse,” he said.
“Upon completion, the combined business will serve 10 million video, data, voice and mobile subscribers, with leading positions across multiple markets,” he continued.
“With our long track record of strong operational and financial performance in the region, we are confident that this combination will yield substantial synergies and accelerate our current prospects for the LiLAC Group to low double-digit rebased OCF growth over the medium term,” said Mr. Fries.
“Our high-quality networks and commitment to product innovation will provide the foundation for growth and value creation for both Liberty Global and LiLAC shareholders. Upon closing, the combined LiLAC and CWC businesses will benefit from the broader group’s scale and management expertise,” he said.
