The British telecommunications company Vodafone has reached a deal to buy the Spanish cable company Ono for about $10 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The deal is expected to be announced Monday morning and values Ono at about 7.2 billion euros, including the assumption of debt, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the transaction publicly.
Vodafone and Ono declined to comment Sunday.
The deal is expected to allow Vodafone to compete with Telefónica of Spain in offering high-speed broadband to its Spanish customers. This would be Vodafone’s first big deal since the recent sale of its stake in Verizon Wireless to Verizon. The deal could also complicate any efforts from AT&T to acquire Vodafone. AT&T in January said it did not intend to make a bid anytime soon, but has been widely reported to remain interested in a deal that would give it room to grow in Europe.
Last week, Vodafone submitted a tentative offer for Ono ahead of the company’s annual meeting. Vodafone also was given access to the company’s financials as part of the due diligence process ahead of a potential deal.
At the meeting, Ono’s shareholders approved the process of beginning an initial public offering for the company. But the company’s board decided to also continue discussions with Vodafone, according to another person familiar with the discussions.
Ono’s shareholders include the private equity firms Providence Equity Partners, CCMP Capital Advisors and Thomas H. Lee Partners. They were thought to prefer a sale to a larger rival over a listing on the Madrid stock exchange.
In 2013, Ono’s earnings before taxes, depreciation and amortization declined 8.8 percent to €686 million from the year-earlier period. The company has about 1.5 million broadband customers and about one million mobile telephone customers. Its fiber-optic services are offered to about 7.2 million homes.
The deal comes amid a flurry of asset sales and consolidation among European telecom companies in the past year.
Through the 12 months that ended March 7, announced takeovers involving telecom companies increased fourfold to $194 billion, according to data from Thomson Reuters. That includes Vodafone’s $130 billion sale of a 45 percent stake in Verizon Wireless last year.
On Friday, the French media conglomerate Vivendi said that it would enter into exclusive negotiations with the cable and mobile phone provider Altice for three weeks over SFR, Vivendi’s mobile phone unit. The Vivendi agreement followed a showdown between Altice and Bouygues, the owner of Bouygues Telecom, France’s third-largest mobile operator, for SFR.
The bidding war has pitted Martin Bouygues, the billionaire who runs the diversified industrial group that bears his name, against the French entrepreneur Patrick Drahi, who since 2002 has built Altice into a global operation with cable and cellphone assets in Europe and the Caribbean.
The Altice offer consists of a payment of 11.75 billion euros, or about $16.3 billion, and 32 percent stake in Altice’s Numéricâble, which will be combined with SFR. It also provides Vivendi with predetermined exit conditions, Vivendi said.
Chad Bray reported from London and David Gelles from New York.
