The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT) is ex­pect­ed to give its fi­nal de­ci­sion on the pro­posed merg­er of Ca­ble and Wire­less Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (CWC) and Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al to­day.Yes­ter­day, the mat­ter was the fo­cus of two meet­ings. One was be­tween CWC and the Na­tion­al En­ter­pris­es Ltd (NEL) at the Hilton Ho­tel to deal with dis­pos­al of CWC's shares in TSTT. Late yes­ter­day evening an­oth­er meet­ing was due to take place at TATT's of­fice in Barataria, fol­low­ing which the reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ty was ex­pect­ed to an­nounced whether or not it ap­proved the merg­er.

In its first ma­jor state­ment on the pro­posed CWC-Colum­bus merg­er, TATT sug­gest­ed last Thurs­day that CWC sus­pend its share­hold­er rights with re­gard to its stake in ma­jor­i­ty state-owned TSTT, among oth­er con­di­tions. In re­sponse, CWC said it looked for­ward to work­ing with the NEL to agree to fair treat­ment of its TSTT shares.

CWC said then that it "ful­ly recog­nised that our share­hold­ing in TSTT would need to be neu­tralised ei­ther by a blind trust or by dis­pos­al of our shares, mat­ters that were pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered by the com­pa­ny.""We look for­ward to work­ing with the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er, NEL, to agree a fair process for dis­pos­al, as em­bod­ied in our ex­ist­ing share­hold­er agree­ment, and are sup­port­ive of a dis­pos­al process that per­mits an or­der­ly sale to be con­clud­ed in a pe­ri­od of not more than 18 months."

CWC con­trols 49 per cent of shares in TSTT with the re­main­ing 51 per cent con­trolled by Gov­ern­ment through its in­vest­ment hold­ing com­pa­ny, NEL.The pro­posed merg­er is be­ing strong­ly op­posed by the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union, bar­gain­ing agents for TSTT em­ploy­ees. They have warned that the moved will re­sult­ed in job loss­es in the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions sec­tor and have stepped by their cam­paign against the move.

There are al­so con­cerns that the merg­er could lead to a de­cline in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pe­ti­tion across the re­gion. It will re­sult in CWC ac­quit­ting 100 per cent of Colum­bus In­ter­na­tion­al for US$1.85 bil­lion.Com­ple­tion of the trans­ac­tion is con­di­tion­al on reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval in Bar­ba­dos, Ja­maica and T&T. Ja­maica has al­ready ap­proved the merg­er.