CVC Capital Partners to buy City Telecom assets

Hong Kong-based operator City Telecom has announced that it will sell its telecoms assets to CVC Capital Partners, pending shareholder approval. The private equity firm, via Metropolitan Light Company, will pay around HKD5 billion (USD644 million) to acquire City Telecom’s fibre broadband and voice telephony business in Hong Kong, as well as the operator’s long-distance telephony assets in Canada. According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, at the end of 2011 City Telecom claimed a 24.2% share of the Hong Kong broadband subscriber market, via subsidiary Hong Kong Broadband Network (HKBN), and had almost 500,000 VoIP subscribers.