The strategic partner for the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) will be announced by July 14 if all goes according to plan, authorities have revealed.
In an official statement, Chairperson of the Tenders Commission Ruth Millar said that the Preferred Bidder will be announced by July14.
The statement also indicated that due to additional queries from the short-listed bidders following meetings with Minister of State for Finance James Smith last month, the deadline for the final submission of bids has been extended until June 13.
That final submission will include details of proposed ownership arrangements, financial bids and other relevant items.
But information regarding the Share Purchase and Subscription Agreement and other contractual and legal concerns will be released to the short-listed bidders by Friday.
The preferred bidder will sign the Share Purchase and Subscription Agreement within 30 days after selection.
The entire process should be completed about three weeks after the signing.
The three companies participating in the final phase of the bidding process are the Bahamatel Consortium, Blue Telecommunications (Bahamas) Ltd. and Detecon International GmbH and TransWorld Telecom (Bahamas) Ltd.
Lindbergh Smith, president of the Blue group, which is in partnership with Deutsche Telekom, the German telecommunications giant, said that there were a number of issues that led to the request for further information.
They included the government’s plans for the implementation of a new wireless
system and a submarine cabling system.
“We are very sensitive to the need for these projects to go forward, but we are also cognizant of the fact that it has a residual effect with respect to the evaluation process,” he said.
Mr. Smith said that his company also had concerns regarding the cost of the entire project, the implementation and the long-term service and upgrade of the systems.
Felix Stubbs, who represents TransWorld Telecom, said he felt the delay would be advantageous to bidders.
“We are happy that they have delayed things by a couple of weeks,” Mr. Stubbs said. “That should help considerably to make sure that the quality of the document we are going to submit is of the highest standard.”
The major shareholder in Mr. Stubbs’ company is a Canadian financial company named Onex International, which has a reputation of carrying out mergers and acquisitions.
The Bahamatel Consortium, headed by Bahamian Tom Bain is linked to two of the biggest banks on Wall Street: J.P. Morgan and Citigroup.
It also includes a consortium of local pension fund investors in a $13 million private equity fund.
The deadline extension is not the first one since the bidding process for the BTC strategic partner began.
An initial January 10 deadline for preliminary bids was pushed back to February 24.
British telecommunications conglomerate Cable and Wireless, which submitted a preliminary bid for the 49 percent of BTC shares, was eliminated from the bid race.
By Julian Reid, The Bahama Journal
