A consortium led by the Italian economy ministry has filed a 700 million euro ($733 million) binding offer for Telecom Italia's (TIM) submarine cable unit Sparkle, the ministry said on Thursday.
The ministry is bidding with Retelit, an Italian fibre network operator owned with Spanish infrastructure fund Asterion. The offer is valid until January 27, the statement said.
Italy is looking to secure control of Sparkle, a firm deemed of strategic importance due to its cable network of more than 600,000 kilometres that transmits information between countries in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Americas.
TIM is expected to hold a board meeting on Friday to start discussing the offer, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
The sale of Sparkle is part of infrastructure asset sales by TIM Chief Executive Pietro Labriola, aimed at cutting the company's debt pile and focusing on its services business.
TIM finalised the sale of its domestic fixed line asset network to US fund KKR at the start of July. The deal, worth up to 22 billion euros, was backed by the Italian Government, which took a stake in the network venture.
(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte and Elvira Pollina, writing by Gianluca Semeraro, editing by Giulia Segreti)