Aussie Broadband’s acquisition of fellow telco and CRN Fast50 company Over The Wire (OTW) has cleared its final hurdle and the deal is set to finalise later this month.
In an ASX announcement, OTW said the Federal Court of Australia has made orders approving the scheme of arrangement for Aussie Broadband’s proposal to wholly acquire OTW.
Aussie Broadband announced plans to acquire the IT and telco services company in December 2021 for $390.4 million as it sought to bolster its business segment, specifically its product and skills capability.
OTW said it expects to lodge the court orders with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Friday to make the scheme effective, and the company will also apply for its shares to be suspended from trading at the close of trade the same day.
The acquisition is scheduled to be fully implemented by 15 March 2022.
Upon completion, Aussie will bring in 16,000 business, enterprise, government and wholesale customers from OTW to its own customer base of 28,000 business customers and 410,000 residential customers.
The telco will also move its voice services from third party carriers onto OTW’s voice network, while OTW customers will move to Aussie’s internally developed integrated CRM & billing platform. Aussie’s network automation and Carbon platform will also be combined with OTW’s NetSIP voice automation platform.
OTW group chief executive Michael Omeros will join Aussie Broadband’s board of directors, replacing director John Reisinger. Reisinger will remain Aussie’s chief technology officer.
The deal was first made public in October 2021, when Aussie confirmed a report from The Australian at the time, saying it had preliminary “discussions” with OTW at the time.
In September 2021, Aussie revealed it had raised $114 million at the time to help fund its growth plans, including new business product and technology development, more fibre and network builds and potential mergers and acquisitions.
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