Eircom hires Goldman, Morgan Stanley to advise on flotation

Eircom has appointed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to advise it on a possible stock market listing two weeks after announcing it was considering a third flotation in 15 years.

The two banks will “explore strategic options for the company including a potential international offering and listing,” Eircom said in a statement.

Earlier this month Eircom said it had hired bank Rothschild to advise on a possible flotation.

The former state telecoms operator filed for protection from its creditors two years ago to restructure €3.75 billion of debt and was taken over by its senior lenders after cutting its debt by 40 per cent.

The examinership was the largest in Irish corporate history and saw nearly all of the company’s junior debt wiped out.

Eircom now has debts of about €2.2 billion, and it recently negotiated an extension of some of these loans, pushing out the maturity of the senior notes from 2017 to 2019, in what it called an “amend and extend” process.

If Eircom does choose to float on the stock exchange, it will the third time it has done so in 15 years, following the controversial 1999 privatisation of the State-owned Telecom Éireann. It was later taken private by Sir Anthony O’Reilly’s Valentia consortium, which brought it back to the market in 2004.