Sky hook in over £400m for Tiscali

Sky hook in over £400m for Tiscali Sky are all set to raise £450 million in a bond issue to institutional investors in order to stump up some massive coin which is allegedly earmarked for the acquisition of the UK tentacle of Tiscali.

Tiscali have recently confirmed that they have been in talks with Sky over a potential deal – the Italy-based ISP and telecoms outfit announced late last year that the long term goal for 2008 was to find themselves the right buyer.

It is uncertain whether or not the deal includes Sky taking over the Tiscali TV IPTV platform, on which there are already a number of Sky channels. If the deal goes ahead, Tiscali TV, which began life as Homechoice, could potentially be rebranded under the Sky Picnic name, in the event that a deal with Ofcom is worked out.

The move would not only see Sky leapfrog into third place behind broadband and digital TV rivals BT and Virgin Media and ahead of Carphone Warehouse, whose main broadband concern TalkTalk is also reportedly up for sale.

There are rumours that Sky are also interested in buying up TalkTalk along with Tiscali, but if this were true, then the satellite giant would probably need to dig a little deeper – the TalkTalk arm of Carphone’s business is valued at a cool £1bn.

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