eBone, the 25,000km European data network that KPNQwest acquired last March, is set for a sale to UK consortium Oakley Investors.
Not translated from Dutch by cheekymonkey;)
While negotiations for the sale of KPNQwest"s entire network have fallen through over recent weeks, Oakley is on the verge of signing an agreement with KPNQwest"s administrators for eBone in Amsterdam today, a spokesman said. Graham Kinsey, spokesman for eBone"s network operations centre (NOC) in Belgium, said: "The guys from Oakley have been to the NOC for a look around and are now on the plane to Amsterdam where they will talk to the administrators about a sale. It looks pretty good."
A spokesman for Trimoteur, which last week put forward an offer of E60m (£36m) cash for KPNQwest"s network, including eBone and E125m (£75m) to E150m (£90m) to settle some of its debts, said: "Our offer was very good. The administrators haven"t received a bid anywhere near ours. We put in a figure based on the historical costs and assets of the company. "KPNQwest will definitely be split up now. The value of the company will go down because of that. The administrators can"t expect to get more than 15 to 20 per cent of the value of our bid for KPNQwest now. They won"t recover a lot of their money."