|
|
Private equity firm Apollo Global Management will buy a portion of Lumen Technologies’ broadband and telephone infrastructure for $7.5 billion and assume $1.4 billion of Lumen’s debt, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The transaction covers about 5 million Lumen residential and business customers, mostly in the U.S. Midwest and Southeast.
Around the purchased networks, Apollo will form a new company, led by veterans of Verizon’s FIOS broadband service, and speed the transition of equipment from wires to fiber optic cable.
Last month, Lumen sold its Latin American assets to Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, another private equity firm, for $2.7 billion. Stonepeak rebranded the purchased assets as the “New LATAM Co.”
Lumen is the new name of CenturyLink, which rebranded itself last year.
Lumen is one of the last remaining vestiges of the old AT&T telephone monopoly.
TRENDPOST: We note again that private equity firms are turning the U.S. economy into their wholly-owned subsidiary, buying their way deeper and deeper into our financial lives to enrich the few and eliminate competition and choice for American consumers.
As we have said (“Private Equity Firms Buying Chinese,” 8 June, 2021), as the Bigs gain wealth and power, there are fewer forces to stop them from buying politicians to write rules that will keep their taxes low and their ability to amass wealth unchecked.