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Kurt Sansone
State-owned telecoms company Maltacom and its subsidiary Go Mobile have no chief executive officers currently at their helm just at a time when the group of companies are about to be privatised.
Maltacom CEO Stephen Muscat has been on long leave since the beginning of August for reasons as yet undisclosed by the company that is listed on the Malta and London stock exchanges.
Unrelated to Muscat’s absence from Maltacom’s top post, this week Go Mobile also lost its CEO Prof. Juanito Camilleri.
Camilleri, who oversaw the birth of Go Mobile in 1999 and steered the company to an impressive 50 per cent market share, has moved over to Maltacom’s rival Melita Cable.
Camilleri was appointed CEO of Melita Cable, replacing Joseph R. Aquilina who held the post for the last two years.
Even if Camilleri parted with Go Mobile on good terms, his move to communications rival Melita Cable has raised eyebrows at Maltacom. It is understood that Camilleri’s contract with Go Mobile precluded him from working with rival communications companies for a defined period of time after terminating his employment mobile phone company. Apart from his expertise, Camilleri takes with him at Melita Cable a deep insight of Maltacom’s future strategy, especially the telecoms company’s prospective foray into digital terrestrial television some time next year.
But employment relations experts believe it will be next to impossible for Go Mobile to enforce the clause in Camilleri’s previous contract to prevent him from working at Melita Cable.
Media reports mid-week said that Melita Cable made Camilleri an offer he “could not refuse”. But Camilleri’s move can also be seen to be strategic since Maltacom’s management structure is likely to be overhauled after the company is privatised in the coming months.
Maltacom’s internet company, Terranet and bandwidth provider Datastream have now merged into one company with Keith Fearne, formerly CEO at Terranet taking over the reins at the newly formed subsidiary.
The move leaves former Datastream CEO Godfrey Vella without an official position.
Meanwhile, Maltacom’s privatisation is moving along at a brisk pace. The deadline set by government for non-binding expressions of interest in the sale of its remaining 60 per cent shareholding in Maltacom expired on 31 August.
It is believed that the Privatisation Unit has received a number of applications, the most recent being that of Telekom Slovenia and its mobile subsidiary Mobitel, who have submitted a joint bid.
In September last year the press office of Telecom Italia had neither denied nor confirmed rumours that were rife at the time that it was interested in buying government’s shareholding in Maltacom. Deutsche Telekom are also rumoured to be very interested in the privatisation.
Government officials have remained tight lipped over Maltacom’s privatisation, which could possibly represent the most lucrative sale in the privatisation programme for the coming years.
Maltacom was formed on 31 December 1997, to take over the business of Telemalta Corporation, the State telecommunications monopoly established in 1975.
In June 1998 the Labour government sold 40 per cent of its shareholding in Maltacom through an initial public offering (IPO). Government offered for sale 20 per cent of the shares on the domestic market and the remaining 20 per cent were offered for sale on the international market.
As a result of the partial privatization, the Company’s shares are now traded on the Malta Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange.
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