The Milei authorities preventively suspends the sale of Telefónica in Argentina | EUROtoday

The authorities of Javier Milei has suspended in a “preventive” means on Friday on the final minute the sale operation of the Argentine subsidiary of Telefónica to the corporate Telecom Argentina, owned by 80% of the highly effective Clarín group, of native capitals. In an announcement that carries the signing of the president’s workplace, the Casa Rosada warns that it responds to a advice from the Competition Defense Commission, “attentive to the fact that the merger of both companies would significantly increase their market share.”

According to the calculations of the Argentine Government, in case Telecom provides Telefónica’s belongings, “61% for the mobile phone market, 69% for fixed telephony” and as much as “80% of the residential Internet service in some areas of the country.”

“The process of evaluation of the effects of the acquisition notified to the National Commission for Defense of Competition requires the maximum rigor, respecting the applicable regulations and international standards, in response to the relevance of telecommunications in today’s world. That is why the decision has been made to protect the transparency and free of the market by means statement.

Telefónica approved on February 24 the sale of its business in Argentina for 1,245 million US dollars (approximately 1,189 million euros to the current exchange rate) to Telecom Argentina. It was the first corporate operation that signed the Spanish telecommunications giant since in January Marc Murtra assumed the presidency of the company, replacing José María Álvarez-Pallete.

The Argentine government warned that it would apply antitrust regulations, because “70% of telecommunications companies would stay within the arms of a single financial group, which might generate a monopoly, shaped because of many years of state advantages.” The background is the fight that Milei maintains with the Clarín Group, editor of the Clarín newspaper, the largest circulation in the country, in addition to the 24 -hour TN news signal, Channel 13 of Television and Radio Miter. Even today, Milei keeps a tweet of March 2 that titled “Clarín: the good Argentine rip-off”. In a long text, he accuses his journalists “to host the federal government with lies just because we stated that we had been going to defend the Argentines of the abuse of the dominant place that the group desires to have on this planet of telecommunications.”

Milei’s zeal against an eventual monopoly contrasts with what he held in mid -February in a speech at the headquarters of the Inter -American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington DC. Towards the end of his speech, he said that, after many years of study, he had understood that “monopolies usually are not unhealthy, until they’re armed by the State.” According to the logic of the ultra -rightist, the state control bodies would have nothing to say about a purchase and sale of private companies.

From Telecom Argentina they assured at the time of purchase that the Adquision of Telefónica does not imply the formation of a monopoly because “they’re corporations which have complementarity in companies and geography.” “These consolidations are being given in telecommunications corporations all over the world. Telefónica had made the choice to retire years in the past and that led to a non -investment system,” the company’s external communications director, Pedro López Matheu, told El País. “There is the chance for a gaggle of nationwide capitals to consolidate their investments in Argentina,” he added.

Telefónica, who was current in Argentina since 1990, when the federal government of the Peronist Carlos Menem (1989-1999) privatized state Entel, had entrusted the sale of his enterprise in Argentina to JP Morgan and the regulation agency Latham & Watkins, as a part of a broader technique of divestment in Latin America.