Jamaica's Information Minster, Daryl Vaz, announced yesterday, that a decision re Digicel's proposed takeover of Claro Jamaica's assets had been made.
[The deal was an asset swap, wherein which the Digicel Group would give the assets of Digicel El Salvador and Digicel Honduras to América Móvil, in exchange for Claro Jamaica's assets.
The deal was struck between Digicel's owner - Denis O'Brien and América Móvil's owner - Carlos Slim Helu ion March 2011 and was to be completed on June, 2011.
América Móvil - the largest mobile telecommunications company (telco) in Latin America, is Claro's parent company. Digicel is the largest mobile telco in the Caribbean].
He also stated, that an announcement re this decision would have been made next week and that there were some conditionalities to be worked out.
...However, Jamaican radio station, Power 106 FM, reported this evening, that the Jamaican government, the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) and the Fair Trading Commission(FTC) have approved the deal.
Well, we predicted that this would have happened, and as previously stated, the government of Jamaica had no option than to allow this deal to go through.
It will be interesting to see how Digicel proceeds with their virtual monopoly and what conditionalities the Jamaican government, FTC and OUR have implemented to ensure that there is opportunity for active competition in the mobile market.
In related news, Claro dealers (who sell mobile phones and accessories specifically for the Claro network), have been troubled for some time re the pending asset swap, as they fear that it would result in them being left out in the cold.
Up to two weeks ago they had still not heard word from Claro nor Digicel re whether or not they'll be phased out or immersed into Digicel's dealer network...
(Quite a few Claro and Digicel dealerships are situated beside each other, so these Claro dealerships, via mere location, will be redundant as a result of the asset swap).
We will keep you updated re this and other news re the takeover, especially if the deal has been approved in El Salvador, where there was some delay due to translation errors in the takeover agreement.
Gillian
Sources Include
Power 106 FM News at 5:00 p.m, August 26,2011
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