Swedish telecoms group Telia said yesterday that it had won 97.78 per cent control of Norwegian mobile phone group NetCom under a $2.6 billion takeover offer.

Telia said that it owned 56.49 per cent of NetCom shares after a surprise bid in June for NetCom, exceeding an offer by Danish rival TeleDanmark. In addition, it said it had received acceptances from holders of 41.29 per cent of the voting rights. Telia is a 14 per cent shareholder in Eircom and will sell that shareholding in about six months.

TeleDanmark bowed out of the fight for NetCom on Monday, saying it would sell its 20 per cent stake in NetCom to give it a pretax gain of about $200 million. TeleDanmark had offered 310 crowns per share, compared to Telia's 470 crowns.

Together with US partner SBC Communications, TeleDanmark had owned about 40 per cent of NetCom.Under Norwegian law, a bidder can force minority shareholders to sell their stakes once it secures more than 90 per cent control of the target company.

Telia says a takeover of NetCom would give it about 28 percent of Norway's mobile phone market, or about 750,000 subscribers with some of the highest phone use in the world.

Even so, some analysts said Telia's offer price seems high, at almost $3,500 per subscriber. NetCom's illiquid shares were untraded yesterday.