Smart unlikely to return to home phone sector

THE prospective new owner of Smart Telecom has ruled out a return for the company to the home phone business and said that the troubled telecommunications firm will be back on the growth path by the middle of next year.

Brendan Murtagh — the co-founder of building materials firm Kingspan and Smart’s single largest shareholder — will know tomorrow whether or not the company’s shareholders are in favour of him taking over the company.

Mr Murtagh — via his BidCo vehicle — bought Smart for €1 earlier this month. The company’s shareholders are due to meet tomorrow to vote on the move. In the last couple of weeks, opposition has surfaced with one shareholder claiming he had enough support to scupper Mr Murtagh’s plans. Smart shareholder Des Carrick said he had the support of just over 3% of the company’s shareholders — who, between them, own some 12 million shares in the company.

Speaking in an interview over the weekend, Mr Murtagh said: “Naturally shareholders are going to be aggrieved at how badly they’ve done in the company but, at the end of the day, the potential is there.”

He said that Smart would be back on a growth curve after four or five months consolidation and added that “growth will be well managed this time”.

He also said that he had been in exploratory talks with a number of international institutions with regard to investing in the company and claimed that he is hopeful of an agreement being in place before the end of this year.

Mr Murtagh was quoted as saying: “To be honest, I would have been quite happy if someone else had stepped up to do it (bidding to save Smart), but there was only one person.”