Reliance Globalcom takes itself off the selling block

Reliance Globalcom's new CEO Bill Barney said it is abandoning its effort to sell itself off and will instead try to raise debt or equity to fund future expansion efforts, reports the Economic Times.

Barney became Reliance Globalcom's CEO in January as part of a broader effort to reorganize Reliance Globalcom. In addition to Barney, the company just named Rory Cole, former Verizon Business (NYSE: VZ) International business unit president, as its new CFO.

"We'll go to capital markets when we need it, it may be in the form of debt, it may be equity," said Barney in an interview with the Economic Times in Dubai, where he was attending a conference.

He added that his plan is to integrate its three main assets--the FLAG submarine cable network, Ethernet provider Yipes and virtual network operator (VNO) Vanco--into a more cohesive unit.

Through these units, Globalcom provides retail and wholesale services to more than 2,100 businesses, 200 service providers and 2.5 million retail customers in 163 countries.

"In the next four to eight months we will bring the company together as a single company, focusing more on IP (Internet) services (and) 'cloud' services, in addition to our cables, which have been critical, but if you think where the Internet is going, it's largely around fibre and cloud," Barney told the Economic Times.

The service provider's parent Reliance Communications had hoped a sale of the unit would help it reduce over $7 billion in debt. A previous attempt to sell the Globalcom business last April to Batelco and a plan to launch an initial public offering (IPO) of its FLAG submarine cable unit were abandoned.

For more:
- Economic Times has this article
- see this release

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