KPN nearing deal for E-Plus towers?

Dutch telecoms company Royal KPN is close to reaching an agreement for the sale of the mobile phone towers of its German wireless unit E-Plus, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the unnamed sources, American Tower has won the bidding against Swedish private-equity firm EQT Partners and the group of Antin Infrastructure Partners and TDF Group. Boston-based American Tower may pay between EUR300 million and EUR400 million (USD384 million-USD512 million), the people said, adding that final negotiations are ongoing and could still collapse, with a deal potentially announced by next week. As previously reported by CommsUpdate, KPN Telecom earlier this year hired UBS for a sale of thousands of its German unit’s base stations. The move follows the collapse of talks between Spanish group Telefonica and KPN over a possible merger of their respective German units; at the time, KPN was fending off an unsolicited offer by Mexico-based America Movil (AM). However, in June 2012 KPN announced it had failed to find a buyer for E-Plus, citing ‘adverse conditions in financial markets’ as the reason behind the collapse of talks, and shortly after AM succeeded in its bid to increase its stake in the Dutch telco to 28%.