Telikom acquires Datec

 By HELEN TARAWA

TELIKOM has acquired a good PNG company in Datec with its capability in information communication technology and system integration engineering, chief executive officer Michael Donnelly said.

Two months ago, Steamships Trading Company Ltd announced its intention to sell its 100% owned subsidiary Datec to Telikom PNG Ltd. 

Donnelly, while commenting on the acquisition process currently underway, said any acquisition is subject to various regulatory approvals and authority approvals. 

“There’s NICTA (National Information and Communication Technology Authority) approval with regards to Datec’s internet service provider licence, there’s the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission (ICCC) regarding their areas of responsibility, there’s the Minister of Finance approval and of course there’s the Independent Public Business Corporation approval (IPBC),” he said.

“So it’s just good governance basically and some of those approvals we just notify, some of them actually we seek a formal approval.

“Most of these are either completed or just in a process of being finalised with various authorities whether it’s NICTA, ICCC, Minister for Finance and IPBC, all of those are either concluded or in the final stages of being concluded,” Donnelly said.

He said Datec will be operated as a stand-alone business under its current brand because it’s got its own management and it works well that way.

He added that it creates a point of difference in the market place.

Datec has four components;

• ICT system engineering and integration;
• an information services programme;
• a technology learning centre for the latest technologies and projects; and,
• A very good computing component and ICT devises business.

“So we’re buying the whole business, we’re not integrating it into Telikom because we run it as a stand-alone and it will continue to operate under Datec brand.

“We will provide governance, financial supervision, and the new directors of the company and support it in its strategic objectives, but we’re not going to integrate the business into Telikom, there’s no point of it because it does a lot different things to what we do.

“It’s two separate legal entities, we’ll put one or two executives of Telikom who will sit on their board and we’ll have two independent board members.

“We will manage at a strategic level but operationally it will be managed by the existing very capable management.