Swedish telecoms firm Telia is forming a new asset management subsidiary to hold some of its infrastructure assets, which could allow external investors to come in and speed up the company’s infrastructure development plans.
Announcing fourth quarter and full-year financial results today, Allison Kirkby, president and chief executive officer of Telia, said: “As part of our ambition to crystallise and grow the value of our infrastructure assets we are today creating a new business unit, Telia Asset Management, that will own and manage selected assets opening up the opportunity to bring in external investors and accelerate infrastructure development.”
The CEO said that for some time, Telia had been working to identify such assets within its portfolio, where a special focus had been on its towers - in particular in markets where the company acted as a challenger.
“We will now proactively identify relevant partners that could join us on this journey,” Kirkby said.
In October, Stockholm-listed Telia signed an agreement to sell its data carrier subsidiary, Telia Carrier, to Polhem Infra, the joint venture owned by Swedish national pension funds AP1, AP3 and AP4, for SEK9.45bn.
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