HOT's parent company confirmed: We made an offer to acquire Partner

ALTIS, HOT's parent company, confirmed to the stock exchange this morning that HOT had made an offer to acquire the full shareholding of Partner. Eltis, of Patrick Darhi, approved but did not specify the content of the proposal.
HOT submitted an offer to acquire 100% of Partner for more than NIS 3 billion.
If the proposal is approved, the first merger in the cellular industry is expected to take place, after long months of talks where HOT, controlled by Darhi, wants to merge with one of the companies, Cellcom or Partner.
Partner also announced that it had received a purchase offer from Maltese Europe for 100% of its shares. "Partner's board will review the proposal," the company said. The deal is led by Drehi himself, along with Dexter Guy Dexter CEO Altis, and Tal-Granot Goldstein, HOT CEO who is expected to serve as CEO of the merged company if the merger does come into effect.
Attempts to merge between telecommunications companies in the market have been taking place for a year. HOT maintained a merger with Cellcom led by Darhi and Eduardo Elstein, but these did not mature into a deal, and HOT contacted Partner when it was controlled by Haim Saban, when the parties failed to reach agreements.
Granot Goldstein recently referred to the state of the telecommunications market in Israel, saying, "Only in the last decade has the HOT group invested an average of NIS 1 billion a year in telecommunications infrastructure.
"But in the face of this huge investment, we are facing a warning sign: While Israel's product is growing, the Israeli telecommunications market is shrinking and, as a result, Israel is ranked 22nd among the OECD countries in the share of the communications market's share of GDP," Granot Goldstein added. In order for Israel to advance to the next generation of infrastructure - huge sums must be invested - in addition to current investments - an additional investment of between NIS 8-10 billion is required.
 "The State of Israel and the communications companies have a shared responsibility - the growth that the infrastructure brings with us concerns each and every one of us. The world has already realized that in order to meet demand and develop the infrastructure, it is necessary to unite forces and merge. Mergers are the way to meet this national challenge, and they have the power to encourage innovation, produce change, increase employment and strengthen the Israeli economy. "
Sabina Levy, head of research at Leider Capital Markets, commented that, "We believe this is a merger of many business and general logic, for both companies, but there is still a big question mark regarding the prospect of getting regulatory approval for the deal. Large, and both companies overlap in most areas of its operations.
"On the whole, the suggested price for Partner is not high, but we do not rule out that Altis will raise the offer. We also believe that increasing estimates of the possibility of not granting control to Hutchison increases the likelihood of a deal. In any event, we estimate that in the event and approved, the deal will be Positive impact on the communications industry. "
 Adv. Lior Porat leads communications field at Gornitzky & Co.: "Without going into this specific transaction details, in the actual cellular realm, it has proven that multiplayer players are not conducive to infrastructure development and that intensifying competition has made it difficult to make infrastructure investments. At the time, a senior communications ministry official noted that in the communications market there is a built-in conflict between competition for price and investment incentives and that the lower the price, the negative incentive for investment in advanced infrastructure is created.
Therefore, some have called in the Ministry of Communications to recalculate the route. In this sense, the Hot Partner deal may be a trigger for a recalculation regulator, after previous opportunities have been missed. At the same time, it is a merger such as it is inherently a complex and multidisciplinary merger and its impact on each and every one of the industries it touches will be carefully examined by the appropriate regulators. "