April 21, 2011
French and German telephone companies’ joint venture to purchase equipment expected to yield savings of €1.3 billion after three years of implementation.
On April 18, Willkie client France Telecom-Orange and Deutsche Telekom announced their plan to form a 50/50 procurement joint venture that is expected to result in a combined savings of a about €1.3 billion after three years of implementation. The agreement calls for combining the two companies’ procurement activities of customer equipment, network equipment, service platforms and IT infrastructure. France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with 169,000 employees worldwide and sales of €45.5 billion in 2010.
The multidisciplinary Willkie team (from the Paris, Frankfurt and Brussels offices) advising Telecom Orange includes partners Jacques-Philippe Gunther, Annette Peron, Cédric Hajage, Mario Schmidt and Xavier Dieux; national partners Rolf Hünermann and Jean-Quentin De Cuyper; and associates Laure Pistre, Faustine Viala, Adrien Giraud and Marion Bailly.