A spokesperson for Sir Anthony O’Reilly’s Valentia consortium has confirmed that it has increased its offer to euro 1.22 per share to take over Eircom's fixed line business.
Valentia told ireland.comearly this afternoon that the offer had been made last Friday morning as part of the deal with the Eircom Employee Share Ownership Trust - which represents employees of Eircom who currently own 14.9 per cent of the company.
Valentia had previously offered euro 1.17 per share.
However, the spokesman said, details of the offer had not been made public on Friday, despite the fact that Mr Denis O'Brien's eIsland consortium had increased its offer to euro 1.22 plus a 2.1 cent dividend in response to the agreement between Valentia and Eircom employees .
Valentia’s offer is still less than the bid made by eIsland consortium, but with the backing of the employees and four major international financial institutions - Provident Equity, Warburg Pincus and Goldman Sachs and Soros - Valentia is confident of making the deal.
Ericom’s board is to meet later this afternoon to discuss the bids by both bidders and Eircom said it would not make any comment until after this meeting.
Eircom was floated on the stock market in 1999, subsequently disappointing hundreds of thousands of small investors when its share price slumped. Its fixed-line operation holds 80 per cent of the Irish market.