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Telecom Italia can have majority of Metroweb on certain terms -CDP

Reuters - UK Focus

(Adds details, background)

ROME, April 22 (Reuters) - Telecom Italia (Other OTC: TIAJF - news) can have a majority stake in broadband firm Metroweb providing it accepts proper governance conditions and other phone operators as shareholders, a key Metroweb shareholder said on Wednesday.

"If Telecom accepts the entrance of other operators it could have a majority stake from the very beginning, even though proper governance rules would have to be written," the chairman of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) Franco Bassanini said.

State-lender CDP is one of the controlling shareholders of Metroweb.

This is the first time in discussions over the sale of a Metroweb stake that CDP has opened the door to the possibility of giving Telecom Italia a majority interest in the company, which has attracted takeover interest from Vodafone.

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Metroweb, controlled by CDP and infrastructure fund F2i, is a small firm which rents out fibre optic cables but the government sees it as a building block for a 12 billion euro plan to roll out faster networks in Italy.

Talks with Telecom Italia hit a dead end earlier this year due to disagreements over the ownership structure of a deal and the phone company's Chairman Giuseppe Recchi said in February the board had concluded conditions were not yet right for an agreement.

Bassanini said Italian authorities favoured opening up the capital of Metroweb to all phone operators while keeping a strong financial investor on board but any deal was held back by opposition of Telecom Italia's board.

Telecom Italia, which owns Italy's national telephone network, could take a stake in Metroweb by conferring capital as well as assets, he said.

Both Telecom Italia and Vodafone have set their sights on Metroweb as they seek to meet growing consumer demand for bandwidth-consuming services.

The British company previously said there could be risks to competition if other operators are not allowed to take a stake in Metroweb and have a say over its strategic decisions. (Reporting by Alberto Sisto; writing by Danilo Masoni; editing by Agnieszka Flak and David Clarke)