Millicom Inc, headquartered in New York, has announced that Hutchison Telecommunications Ltd has acquired Millicom Information Services Ltd, one of seven UK national paging operators, for $5.5m in cash, and Millicom says it will make a profit of around $2m on the sale. Hutchison, which has one of the largest paging businesses in the world, has relieved Millicom of a subsidiary that the chairman and chief executive officer, J Shelby Brian, has acknowledged formerly to be unprofitable and responsible for Millicom’s third quarter loss. Shelby claimed the that UK cellular and paging operation was to blame for the $23.5m loss the company reported in November, up from last year’s loss of $18.2m, because it had required considerable investment during its growth phase (CI No 1,560).
