Italy, Asterion table 700 million euro bid for Telecom Italia subsea cable unit

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's Treasury said on Wednesday it had submitted a 700 million euro ($774 million) offer, jointly with Spanish infrastructure fund Asterion, for Telecom Italia's (TIM) submarine cable unit Sparkle.

The ministry is bidding together with Retelit, an Italian fibre network operator owned by Asterion. Italy is looking to secure control of Sparkle, a firm deemed of strategic importance due to its over 600,000-km network that transmits information between countries in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Americas.

In February TIM rejected a previous bid for Sparkle from the Italian Treasury. That offer valued Sparkle 625 million euros plus a further 125 million euros in potential future payments based on a so-called earnout mechanism, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Since then, however, TIM's financial statements for 2023, which the company published in April, have shown it has booked a 107 million euro impairment on Sparkle, valuing the submarine cable business at 481 million euros.

The latest offer is valid until Oct. 15, 2024, the ministry said in a statement. Earlier this year TIM finalised the sale of its domestic fixed line asset network to U.S. fund KKR. The deal, worth up to 22 billion euros, was backed by Italian government, which took a stake in the network venture.

($1 = 0.9049 euros)

(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte and Elvira Pollina, editing by Francesca Piscioneri and Valentina Za)