The state investment company Solidium announced that it intends to sell 68 million of about 505 million shares it holds in TeliaSonera.
The share offering will be available to potential institutional investors in the Nordics and further afield internationally.
Based on TeliaSonera’s share price at the end of trading on the Helsinki Stock Exchange Wednesday, government would bag about 360 million euros if the share offering were fully taken up.
Solidium is looking to offload the shares as quickly as possible and believes that the offering will be fully subscribed by the end of the week.
Capital gains from sale to government
Solidium chief executive Kari Järvinen told Yle that the time was ripe for the transaction.
“TeliaSonera shares have developed extremely well during the past six months and we’ve decided that now would be a good time to trim down our stake in the company slightly, but we will still maintain a significant stake,” he explained.
According to Järvinen any proceeds from the share offering will be returned to the state as a capital repayment this autumn.
The government programme provides for proceeds from share sales to be applied to one-off investments in infrastructure and skills development projects that support sustainable growth.
