The Nordic giant has a chance to come back to Poland many years after it had disappeared from the market. This would be a revolution. The appearance of the telecom headed by Lars Nyberg, within the shareholders' structure of mobile operator controlled by a fund of Thor Bjorskolfsson, would put an end to the oligopoly on the Polish mobile market. 
“PB” has learnt at two independent sources that the majority shareholder of Play telecom is in negotiations to sell the operator. “Novator started presentations for investors in April”, one of “PB” sources said.
Negotiations are at quite preliminary stage. Play managers know nothing about them”, the other source added.

P4, the operator of Play mobile network, develops very dynamically. At the end of this year, two years after its launch, it plans to have 2m clients. It hopes to generate PLN 800m (EUR 238.4m) of sales, three times more than last year when they amounted to PLN 235m. However, this is very expensive. Play’s losses are still big and the company plans to get out of the red in 2010.

“The attempt to sell Play is a rational decision from Novator and the best timing. The fund sells quickly developing business and a bright future. P4 may soon get new GSM900 frequencies, start mobile TV projects, it still has high MTR rates”, Pawel Puchalski,  BZ WBK brokerage analyst commented.

So far, Chinese and Russian capital was being mentioned as a potential investor for Play. Spanish Telefonica was also mentioned and Asian Hutchison. According to “PB” sources, the Swedes are now interested.

“P4 owner talks to TeliaSonera”, one of the sources said.

“It’s not true”, Constantine Gonticas, Novator fund managing director says.

Novator has 75 percent of P4. Thor Bjorgolfsson, Novator owner, has recently said he would like to be the operator’s shareholder for a longer time and did not exclude its listing.

“We are a listed company so all such news are announced in statements. The telecom sector is very dynamic and thus prone to speculations. We cannot comment this news”, Maria Hillborg from TeliaSonera said.

(PLN 1 = EUR 0.298)

2nd September,.2008  More business information on www.pb.pl