In a statement on the Energis web site, chief executive John Pluthero said, “The deal should complete in the autumn once we have clearance from the Office of Fair Trading and agreement from our remaining stakeholders.”

Pluthero added, “Once we have the appropriate approvals we will be combining Cable & Wireless’ UK Retail and Carrier Services businesses and Energis to create a new Cable & Wireless UK business that I will lead.” Cable & Wireless subsidiary Bulldog Communications will be outside Pluthero’s remit though and will continue operating as a standalone business.

An 11th-hour offer by rival Chelys of £800m failed to attract shareholders holding out against the bid from Cable & Wireless.

Commenting on the likely impact on telecoms users, Mark Blowers of analyst firm Butler Group said, “In the short term there’s not much that Energis customers can do, but large enterprise customers always keep a watching brief on market conditions.”

In a press briefing after the announcement, Cable & Wireless chief executive Francesco Caio said, “There is a fundamental shift in the telecoms industry going on. Demand is moving from narrowband to broadband, and business customers are for the first time in many years actively looking to migrate their networks onto new technologies of IP [Internet Protocol].”

Caio said that the acquisition would give Cable & Wireless more scale to compete with BT. “I think the key point of this transaction is that we are in a position to add more volume,” he said.

Meanwhile, another move to consolidate in the telecoms industry failed to make progress last week. T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom and Dutch telecoms company KPN had been planning to bid for mobile telecoms firm O2 but the deal collapsed.

‹ Broadband telecoms providers, p20

‹ www.cw.com ‹ www.energis.com ‹ www.o2.com