GATINEAU – At 4 p.m. today, the CRTC will announce its decision on the proposed sale of Bell Canada’s regulated assets to a private consortium led by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.
Three days of hearings – two in February and a half-day a few weeks later in March – were aimed at fleshing out just where control of Bell Canada’s broadcasting assets (primarily Bell ExpressVu and the minority ownership both Bell and Teachers possess in CTVglobemedia) will lie.
The law says control must remain in Canada (foreigners can’t have more than 46.7% of a telecom firm) – and the Commission was also worried about how the corporation was getting around a pension fund rule that says such funds can’t own more than 30% of a corporation. Click here, here and here, for our coverage of that hearing.
The CRTC’s broadcast-regulated pieces of Bell are tiny compared to the overall deal, which is valued at $52 billion, but the new owners have said that if the Commission yanks on this thread, denying this portion of the purchase, it could unravel the entire deal.
