Estonia, Investments, Legislation, Lithuania, Technology

The Lithuanian Competition Council said it had received an indirect application from Latvia's EuVECA Livonia and Estonia's LHV Varahaldus, filed via a newly-founded Lithuanian company, Silver Screen Holdings, to acquire a 34.8-% stake in Cgates Group.

The deal was announced in late June. Mindaugas Utkevicius, one of the founding partners at Livonia Partners, then said that the investors' consortium planned to purchase a 35% stake in Cgates through a new share issue. The rest of the shares will be owned by Polaris Invest, a company owned by Estonian businessman Indrek Kuivallik, and Estonia's Com Holding.

Utkevicius said that 51% of Cgates' new share issue would be purchased by Livonia Partners, 35% by LHV Pension Funds, and 14% by Ambient Sound Investments, a company owned by Skype's founders. The value of the deal is withheld.

Cgates is Lithuania's second-largest Internet and TV services provider with nearly 300 employees and over 270,000 customers.

According to data provided by the Communications Regulatory Authority, it ranked second in terms of client numbers last year, covering 16% of the market, ranking third in terms of revenue (14.4% of the market).

The company last year posted a net loss of 515,000 euros, versus a net profit of 1.433 million euros in 2015, on revenue of 17.038 million euros, up 3. 7% year-on-year.