ECONOMY

Marfin drops OTE request

Marfin Investment Group SA (MIG), the buyout fund that’s the second-biggest shareholder in OTE telecom, dropped a request for a general shareholder meeting in which it would challenge the company’s management decisions. Marfin said it withdrew the request after talks with representatives of OTE, Greece’s biggest phone company. «Logic and common sense dictate that OTE needs peace in order to focus on its target of continuous improvement of the company,» Marfin Investment said yesterday in a bourse filing. Earlier this month, Marfin Investment called for a shareholder meeting at OTE to challenge Chairman Panagis Vourloumis over decisions including the 2.8-billion-euro buyout of Cosmote Mobile Telecommunications SA. A three-person committee will be appointed «to oversee negotiation of the terms of the long-term financing» of the Cosmote deal, OTE said yesterday in a separate statement. Marfin, whose biggest shareholder is the government of Dubai, said on December 7 it had an 18.5 percent stake in OTE. The announcement was made hours before the Greek government submitted a law requiring investors to receive approval to hold more than 20 percent of «strategic» companies, including OTE. The Greek government is OTE’s biggest shareholder, with a 28 percent stake. Separately Cosmote, Greece’s biggest wireless company by clients, said it will reduce charges for calls terminating in its network for the eighth time since 2003. Cosmote, based in Athens, said the charge for terminating other operators’ calls in its network will be cut to -0.0989 per minute from -0.1067, with no minimum charge, the company said today in a bourse filing. The reduction, estimated at 7.3 percent, will take effect from February 1, 2008. (Bloomberg)

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