Nova announced administrative changes linked to its sale.
More specifically, administrative changes have been implemented at OTE as well as at Vodafone Greece. The three telecommunications providers are now facing the challenges in the telecommunications market under new leadership.
Regarding Nova, its parent company, United Group – which belongs to the BC Partners investment fund and Serbian businessman Dragan Solak and is active in Southeastern European countries in telecommunications and media – speaks of a next phase of the development of its subsidiary in Greece.
Panagiotis Georgiopoulos, until recently CEO of Nova, remains a member of its board of directors and his position is temporarily taken over by George Lambrou (interim CEO) until yesterday Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Furthermore, Ditka Maučec, executive director of product strategy at United Group, is taking on the duties of interim Chief Marketing Officer, replacing Michalis Anagnostakos, and Tomaž Kampuš, executive director of sales and customer experience at United Group, is taking on the duties of interim Chief Commercial Officer, replacing Christos Noulis.
At the same time, a process of divesting BC Partners from United Group is underway, without referring to the plans of its second shareholder, Dragan Solak. According to information, Solak is negotiating with BC Partners to acquire its stake in Nova.
The head of BC Partners, Nikos Stathopoulos, in his interview with Bloomberg, noted that there are great opportunities for investments in Europe, as well as that a higher priority for the private equity sector is successful exits from companies in which they have invested.
United Group, according to its movements so far and the existing information, is not going to be sold as a unit.
In this context, the change in Nova’s shareholding structure is expected within the next two months, as shown by the changes in the management team, while the sale of United’s telecommunications activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro is at an advanced stage.
The purchasing company, BH Telecom (telecommunications provider in Bosnia and Herzegovina) submitted a request to the Competition Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina the day before yesterday for the acquisition of Telemach (a subsidiary of United). The transaction will also be referred for examination to the competent competition authority in Montenegro.
In the announcement with the administrative changes, Nova stated that the telecommunications company showed an increase in revenue of 8.6% and EBITDA of 5.6%i n 2024.
It should be noted that Nova, led by Georgiopoulos, among other things, signed an agreement with Cosmote for the exchange of sports content channels which is considered successful, proceeded with investments in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) infrastructure with the aim of connecting 830,000 households and businesses by 2025, as well as the launch of the Nova 5G Home Internet product. As noted, these initiatives contributed to an increase in its subscriber base by 160,000 in 2024.
United Group has committed to investments of 2 billion euros and, as announced yesterday, 870 million have already been invested.
