TPSA and France Telecom have finally been connected

An agreement with France Telecom, together with its Polish partner Kulczyk Holding, was finally reached yesterday for the purchase of a 35% stake in state-owned telecom company Telekomunikacja Polska S.A. (TPSA), which will earn the State Treasury about $4.3 billion. It is the largest state sell-off to date in eastern Europe. Under the agreement, the companies have the option of increasing their stake in TPSA to 51% at a later date. France Telecom is to pay zl. 38 per share. Previously, in its first tender, France Telecom offered zl. 23 per share, which was considered too low. Kulczyk is to acquire a 10% stake and French Telecom a 25% stake. The delay in signing the contract made investors nervous and caused the zloty to drop slightly. TPSA has 95% of Poland's fixed-line customers and its cellular phone group Centertel has one million subscribers, which is about 20% of the domestic mobile-phone market. The sale should be completed by the end of September and the Treasury is planning to put $1 billion to $1.5 billion of the money in a special foreign-currency account with the National Bank of Poland (NBP). (Prawo i Gospodarka, page 1) M.M.