Italy and Asterion submit fully financed bid for Telecom Italia's Sparkle

By Elvira Pollina and Giuseppe Fonte

ROME (Reuters) - A Treasury-led consortium submitted a new binding bid on Tuesday for Telecom Italia's (TIM) subsea cable business Sparkle, three sources close to the matter told Reuters.

The proposal confirmed a Sparkle valuation of 700 million euros ($724.22 million), in line with an initial offer sent in December, the sources said.

Sparkle is deemed of strategic importance by Italian authorities, given its 600,000km cable network, which transmits information between countries in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Americas.

TIM last month extended to mid-March a deadline to agree a sale of the business because the bid jointly filed by the Treasury and Spanish fund Asterion was reliant on a financing package that had not yet been finalised, separate sources said at the time.

The sources said on Tuesday the new proposal was in line with the previous offer but was no longer subject to any financing conditions.

One of them added that the offer was only 50% debt-financed, the rest being equity.

TIM declined to comment.

The offer is valid until February 14 and TIM's board is expected to discuss its terms on Wednesday, when directors will meet to review the company’s 2024 full-year preliminary earnings and update its business strategy to 2027.

($1 = 0.9666 euros)

(Reporting by Elvira Pollina and Giuseppe Fonte; Editing by Gavin Jones and David Goodman)