Tues - TDC finally gets bought?

It looks like one of the longer running and more tedious take-overs is about to get concluded. TDC, the somewhat uninteresting Danish telecoms group, that has been hogging the business press for the last 6 months looks like it might finally get bought and can become uninteresting again.

And for all the press it looks as though the bidding war we all hoped for to end this episode on a at least a slightly exciting note will not happen after all. The lead bidder, a buy-out group led by Apax seems to be set to win because the other bidders are having trouble getting their bids in.Mmmm.

To be more specific, Swisscom has been stopped from bidding by the Swiss government who owns them and has decided in their infinite wisdom that international expansion does not make any sense. And the rival private equity group led by BC Partners is having trouble filing their bid in time.

So it looks like TDC will go to the Apax group for $11.5bn and at least go down in the books as one of the largest leveraged buy-outs. Unless of course BC Partners decide to inspire us all a little longer by trunping the bid, in which case it would be a larger leveraged buy-out. I'm all for Apax getting the deal mainly so TDC stops hogging the wires!