Denis O’Brien’s Digicel Group plans IPO in New York

Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien’s Digicel Group, the mobile-services company operating in the Caribbean and South Pacific regions, plans to sell shares in an initial public offering and to list on the New York Stock Exchange.

Digicel may use some of the proceeds for capital spending, acquisitions and to pay down debt, which totalled $6.5bn (€5.8bn) at the end of March, according to a filing yesterday. It hasn’t yet decided how many shares will be sold, or the price.

Mr O’Brien founded Digicel in 2001 in Jamaica, a year after he received $288m from selling Esat Telecom Group, the Irish telecommunications company that he built in the 1990s, to BT Group.