British Telecommunications Plc and Italian partner Banca Nazionale del Lavoro are to pay 71m British pounds via their Albacom Holdings joint venture for a 2.4% in Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset SpA, and his Fininvest SpA, parent of Mediaset, will take a 30% stake in the Albacom joint venture, which is currently 50.5% owned by the UK company, 49.5% by the bank. One of the first projects of the new alliance is expected to be a bid for the license for a third cellular telephony operator in Italy. The government is expected to auction a new digital cellular license later this year. Albacom also hopes to take a short cut to acquiring captive long distance infrastructure by making use of the nationwide network that Mediaset uses to interconnect its television transmitters. Mediaset will pay 22m pounds for its Albacom shareholding.
