Canadian Telecom Company To Become American?

[editorial] BCE, the parent company of Bell Canada - Canada’s largest telecom company - is apparently in takeover tallks [Globe and Mail] with KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co), a powerful US buyout firm. As I’ve said before, elsewhere, I’ve no love for Bell or BCE, but this just rubs me the wrong way for so many reasons, all of which proponents would say are conspiracy theory.

Not suprisingly, one of the biggest shareholders, the OTPP (Ontario Teachers Pension Plan), plans to put together their own consortium to make a bid. And there are two other big US equity firms, as the Globe and Mail article states.

But suffice to say that if even 1/3 of the company’s stake goes south (literally) to the US, then control of an important giant Canadian business goes there too. While Bell is no longer the utility it once was due to deregulation of the telecom industry, this is a bad omen for Canadians and suggests to me that some politics are in play here.

With a Tory (Conservative) government in power, albeit a minority, I see approval being granted, especially since the current PM (Prime Minister) is more than happy to kowtow to American conservative interests - pretty much like every Conservative PM before him. But I doubt that even they would have allowed something like this. (For American and other readers who do not know, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is actually part of an ultra-conservative political party who sneakily took over the traditional Progressive Conservative party and later became PM. On their own, the party was too right-wing to ever make it to power without rigging the vote. Ahem.)

An alternative solution is for Telus Corp., the second largest Canadian telecom, to make a bid. Funny thing though, that is much more likely to be shot down due to regulation than giving control away to a foreign investor. Only in Canada, you say. And don’t get me started on the fact that American security agencies have been monitoring phone calls between Canada and the US.