PRINT THIS PAGE

ARGUS sells 21 per cent stake in Polish firm Aster City Cable to Hicks Muse

Central & Eastern European private equity fund ARGUS Capital Partners has sold its 21 per cent stake in Polish firm Aster City Cable to US buy-out firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed but the fund announced that this sale represented a money multiple of approximately three times for ARGUS and generated an IRR of almost 90 per cent.

Aster City Cable is one of the largest Polish cable television and broadband operators. ARGUS invested in Aster City Cable in March 2003 when it acquired the business from Elektrim Telekomunikacja, along with AIG Emerging Europe Infrastructure Fund and Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, for a total €110m.

This transaction follows the sale of ARGUS' stake in the Hungarian cable television company FiberNet to Warburg Pincus and the leveraged recapitalisations of Svoboda, a large commercial printer in the Czech Republic, and Palace Cinemas, an operator of multiplex cinemas in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia in the last 12 months.

Ali Artunkal, managing partner of ARGUS, said, 'ARGUS has completed two full exits in the last four months, as well as the successful leveraged recapitalisations of two of our portfolio companies in the last 12 months, demonstrating that there is currently an attractive exit climate for the right companies in Central and Eastern Europe.'

Formerly ARGUS was a subsidiary of The Prudential Insurance Company of America but the firm successfully completed its own management buy-out in June 2002. ARGUS held a final closing of its first Central European private equity fund in September 2000 at $172m.

Copyright © 2005 AltAssets