Irish incumbent Eircom rejected a takeover offer of €3.3 billion from an unknown bidder, saying that “while the bidder was very credible, with the business reaching an inflection point, the indicated price range undervalued the group.”

The mystery bidder could be US investment house Anchorage Capital, which upped its 8 per cent interest in Eircom to 33 per cent by buying a 25 per cent stake from Blackstone’s credit business GSO Capital Partners, according to the Irish Times.

The transaction is thought to have taken place in recent days and left GSO, Eircom’s largest shareholder, with a five percent stake.

Eircom’s mobile business Meteor has a 22 per cent market share in Ireland, putting it in third place behind Vodafone and O2/3,  according to GSMA Intelligence.

Last year, Eircom backed out of a possible IPO and in 2012 filed protection from its creditors as a means to restructure €3.75 billion in debt.

The deadline for Eircom to request its lenders, many of whom are also shareholders following the 2012 examinership, to extend the repayment date for its loans is today (20 May).

After reporting third-quarter revenue of €311 million earlier this week, a 1 per cent fall year-on-year, CEO Richard Moat said he expected the company to return to revenue growth in the current quarter, bringing it closer to an IPO, which would be its third flotation in 15 years.

In March, Geoff Shakespeare, MD of technology evolution, said that following financial trouble, “for the first time in a long while we have a new set of products and services to launch, hubbed around the massive network investment we’ve made”.

This included spend on mobile, with the company being the first in Ireland to launch 4G services. It also has a network partnership in place with 3 Ireland, which has enabled it to bolster its nationwide coverage.

“Within six months we will not be dependent on roaming on anybody else’s network. That’s important for us from a cost-base point of view, because a huge part of the future for network operators like ourselves revolves around controlling our costs,” he said.