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European media Monday
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December 11, 2000: 5:23 a.m. ET
Newspapers: Sasol to buy $1.3B Condea; 3G licenses a waste of money
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LONDON (CNNfn) - South Africa's Sasol has agreed to buy RWE-Dea AG's chemicals unit Condea for around  1.5 billion ($1.3 billion) according to a published report in Germany Monday.
Financial daily Handelsblatt said an announcouncement would be made later Monday, confirming the acquisition by the South African oil and chemicals firm. The newspaper said worker representatives at Condea had lobbied for the firm to be sold as a sinlge entity to an industrial bidder, rather than a financial company such as buyout specialist Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts, which had expressed an interest.
The Bank of England has become concerned about the mountain of debt racked up by telecom acompanies, according to London's Daily Telegraph.
The newspaper said the Bank's six-monthly Financial Stability Review, due for release Thursday, will focus on the huge sums that telecom operators have borrowed, �following a spate of deals and big investments in networks and services. The newspaper said the Bank was worried about the sums of money that commercial banks had lent to the telecom sector.
Recently listed mobile-phone operator Telef�nica M�viles SA and Gamesa, an aerospace technology and wind-energy company, are the leading candidates to join Madrid's benchmark Ibex 35 index in January, said Spanish daily Cinco D�as, which reported that a committee meets Tuesday to decide changes to the index's composition. Water utility Aguas de Barcelona SA and construction company Grupo Ferrovial SA are threatened with ejection from the Ibex, the paper said.
The initial public offering of Mannesmann Arcor AG has been shelved for 2001, according to Handelsblatt. Deutsche Bahn AG, the owner of 18 percent of the business, refused to attend board and shareholder meetings at which the IPO was to have been discussed. The newspaper said the Arcor board then decided to shelve previous plans for an IPO in 2001. The result is a blow to Vodafone Group PLC (VOD), which owns 74 percent of Arcor and wanted to raise funds for acquisitions.
Some £60 billion ($87 million) spent buying licenses to offer third-generation cellular phone services could be money down the drain, according to The Times of London. A Finnish professor has developed technology that would allow companies without the licenses to operate Internet services via mobile phones in big cities. The newspaper said a major Finnish Internet service provider was already trialling the software.
Telef�nica SA will save nearly 1.9 billion ($1.7 billion) on the cost of takeovers unveiled this year, because the share prices of its target companies have fallen more sharply than its own stock, said Madrid business paper Expansi�n. The telephone company agreed in February to buy out minority shareholders in its Latin American subsidiaries, and in August announced the takeover of Dutch TV program producer Endemol, both times agreeing to pay in stock. As a result of changes in share prices since between the announcement and completion of the purchases, Telef�nica will issue 9.5 percent fewer new shares to pay for the transactions than it originally planned, the paper said.
European stock exchange regulators are moving towards tighter regulations governing the admission of companies to share listings, reported Cinco D�as, which said the falsification of accounts at Belgian high-tech company Lernout & Hauspie, revealed in recent weeks, highlighted the relative slackness of European exchange regulations in comparison with those applied in the United States. Bourses in Stockholm and Amsterdam have this year tightened their listing rules, while authorities in Frankfurt are revising the standards governing the Neuer Markt, Germany's market for high-growth stocks. The unconventional ways of "new economy" stocks present a particular challenge to regulators, the paper said.� 
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