Mid Europa Partners (MEP), the London-based Central and Eastern European buyout firm, has re-acquired Polish media and communications company Aster City Cable from Lion Capital.
Â
The firm has paid PLN1.6 billion (€412 million; $489 million) to buy back the company which it had until September 2004 co-owned with Lion. At the time, MEP was known as EMP Europe, while Lion was the European arm of Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst.
Lion received a return of 4.8 times their original investment on the deal, according to a statement from the firm.
Â
“At the time of the sale we were at a crossroads,” Matthew Strassberg, a spokesman for MEP, told PEO. “We thought the consolidation of the market in Poland would have a five year time horizon, but we were at the end of the investment cycle of an old fund and were in no position to participate. We also held a joint position with Hicks Muse and so could not control the company. Now we have a new fund to provide capital resources for the company to become a consolidator over the next five years.”
Â
He added that MEP expects to hold a final close of its new fund, the €650 million ($765 million) Emerging Europe Convergence Fund II, shortly.
Â
Aster is a triple-play provider, offering television, broadband internet and telephony services. A statement from the two firms describes it as Poland’s fourth-largest CATV operator and third largest broadband ISP.
Â
Recent weeks have seen significant deal activity in the European telecoms sector. In late November it was announced that an Apax and KKR-led consortium was to buy TDC, Denmark’s largest telecom operator, in a deal that at €10 billion was believed to be the largest buyout yet seen in the Nordic region.
Â
Earlier this year an Aletheia Partners-led consortium paid €600 million to acquire German Cable company EWT, and EQT Partners sold Swedish communications company Com Hem to The Carlyle Group and Providence Equity Partners for around €1 billion last week.