Sale of OTE’s Romanian arm gets approval

EU antitrust regulators on Wednesday gave conditional approval to French telecoms provider Orange to buy 54% of Telekom Romania Communications from Deutsche Telekom’s Greek unit OTE.

France’s biggest telecoms group announced the deal, which gave the Romanian company an enterprise value of 497 million euros, in November last year.

The European Commission said Orange had given concessions to address its concerns regarding the impact of the deal on the Romanian retail mobile market.

“The approval is conditional on the divestiture of Telekom Romania Communications’ 30% minority shareholding in Telekom Romania Mobile Communications,” the EU competition enforcer said in a statement.

The stake will be sold to Deutsche Telekom’s Greek unit OTE and its current controlling shareholder. [Reuters]