Posted: 10th Dec, 2008 By: MarkJ
It's no secret that BSkyB (
Sky Broadband) has been in talks to acquire
Tiscali's UK ISP division for some weeks now, although neither side have spoken at any length about their negotiations.. until now. Sky's Chief Financial Officer, Andrew Griffith, has recently been busy promoting the idea to a UBS investor conference:
"
At the moment, we only address 9 million homes, so Sky broadband products - great value though they are - only speak to customers who are willing to take the TV offering," he said. "
Something like Tiscali would allow us to extend our offering and our services in a scale industry to another 16 million households, and that potentially could have value."
Tiscali UK is believed to be worth somewhere in the region of £500m, though troubled markets and pull-outs by potential big name buyers, such as
Vodafone, have dogged
Tiscali's sale process since it began last spring. Naturally
Tiscalis shares jumped 8.4% on the news yesterday.