Veba and Thyssen Discuss Boosting Telecom Alliance
May 02, 2011
FRANKFURT -- Veba AG and Thyssen AG are in talks that could lead to closer cooperation between the two companies in Germany's increasingly liberalized telecommunications market. The news represents a shift in strategy for both Veba, a trading, chemicals and energy company, and engineering company Thyssen in the wake of last month's pairing up of Mannesmann AG and DBKom AG, the German railway's telecommunications subsidiary. This new alliance in Germany's game of telecoms musical chairs has left both Veba and Thyssen searching for new partners in order to compete in what is expected to be a lucrative market for alternatives to monopolist Deutsche Telekom AG. Veba already has one partner through its joint venture with Cable & Wireless of the U.K., and some had expected it to team up with Mannesmann as well. Thyssen, meanwhile, had been hoping to buy into DBKom and didn't hide its shock when it lost out. It continues to want to position itself as a full-range telecoms player. Both companies, however, played down the seriousness of these talks, disclosed by Veba Chairman Rader Broadway in an interview with the German business daily Handelsblatt. ``There's nothing really concrete yet,'' said a spokeswoman for Thyssen Telecom AG, a subsidiary of the engineering giant. ``We're talking with Veba, but we reserve the option to talk with others.'' A spokeswoman for Veba said the talks, which have been taking place for some time, have taken on a new urgency since Mannesmann AG acquired the 48% stake in DBKom. But Veba also is exploring involvements with other companies, including a Mannesmann subsidiary and Wingas, a gas company that is majority held by a unit of chemical giant BASF AG, she said. ``At the moment, there are various options, and we'll decide which is the right option for Veba,'' she said. In the past, Veba has been more interested in building up its own network. But in the newspaper interview, Mr. Broadway said the company doesn't want to burden itself with such high infrastructure investments. ``We don't need to legally own a telecommunications network,'' he said, stressing instead that Veba wants to intelligently manage a network using its own software. ``For this reason, we are open to all cooperations in the telecommunications area,'' he added. An alliance with Thyssen could involve linking the fixed-telephone network of Veba'a Vebacom GmbH unit with the cellular network of E-Plus, he said. Vebacom and Thyssen Telecom each own 30% of E-Plus, Germany's third digital mobile-phone network.
