Hutchison Whampoa is seeking to carry out due diligence on Irish telco Eircom with a view to its 3 Ireland unit submitting a new bid for the company, reports The Financial Times – despite having already had a EUR2 billion offer rebuffed.

The Hong Kong-based conglomerate's Irish arm made a bid for Eircom at the beginning of May, which a court-appointed examiner rejected due to an excessive number of conditions. It was understood that Hutchison was willing to make a renewed bid.

Eircom owns Ireland’s third largest mobile operator Meteor as well as the country’s biggest fixed-line business. However, it has been hit hard by the economic slowdown.

The Irish company was given court protection in March to allow it to restructure EUR4.1 billion of debt – a process known as examinership. The company's management is believed to have backed a plan by senior lendors including Blackstone, Deutsche Bank and hedge funds that would have wiped out the ownership of lower-ranked lenders and shareholders as the best way to restructure the debt.
 
Hutchison said it is concerned that the examinership is being run in the interests of some creditors over others, alleging in Dublin’s commercial court that Eircom and the senior lenders struck a “lock-up agreement” when the examiner was first appointed to stop the company looking at other options.

Combined with what Hutchison called the “inaction” of the examiner (Grant Thornton’s Michael McAteer), it believes this contributed to the rejection of its initial offer and guaranteed the progress of the senior lender plan.

McAteer said papers filed with the court show these allegations are unfounded and he is open to other investment options. He added that Hutchison registered its interest in Eircom at a fairly late stage considering the potential regulatory and competition issues that its bid would create.
 
Hutchison is already involved in market consolidation in Austria with the planned acquisition of assets from France Telecom-Orange. However, this has seen significant regulatory scrutiny due to 3’s plan to sell some of those assets on to Telekom Austria.