Inaccurate Figures Force Carphone to Reduce Tiscali Sales Price
Carphone Warehouse, the prominent British mobile phones retailer and the owner of one of the largest broadband providers operating in the United Kingdom, TalkTalk, has decided to reduce the original GBP 236 million price it had agreed to pay the Italian broadband supplier, Tiscali, for its assets in the UK.
It was all there in the statement of Charles Dunstone, the chief executive officer of Carphone Warehouse that Tiscali UK overstated the figures effectively, and when they checked the cupboard they could only find lessthan what they had been led to believe.
According to Carphone Warehouse sources, when the agreement was drawn on the transaction, the Italian broadband provider had made them believe that the latter had a broadband customer base of 1.4 million, although a trading statement published recently revealed that it had 160,000 customers fewer than what it had affirmed back in May.
Meanwhile, the broadband market experts calculate that under the new circumstances, the sale price for Tiscali’s assets in the United Kingdom would drop further by around GBP 25 million. This could be a probability according to the experts for one important reason that Carphone Warehouse had agreed originally to pay the Italian owner of Tiscali UK on a per-customer basis.
History says that Tiscali UK once enjoyed the status of one of the largest internet service provider in the United Kingdom, and the sales of its assets in the country had witnessed many dramatic twists. The company also had in its heydays bought a number of rival UK ISPs such as Pipex and Home Choice.
