BCE completes next step of Bell Aliant privatization

MONTREAL and HALIFAX - BCE and Bell Aliant announced Monday the successful completion of the initial phase of BCE's offers to purchase all outstanding Bell Aliant publicly held common shares and to exchange all outstanding Bell Aliant preferred shares.CST Trust Company, the depository for the offers, reported that, as of 5:00 PM Eastern on September 19, a total of 103,486,954 Bell Aliant common shares, representing approximately 81.2% of the outstanding publicly held common shares, had been validly tendered to BCE's offer and not withdrawn. BCE has taken up and expects to pay for such shares on September 24, 2014.As all...