Commander sale fails to tempt local telcos

Commander has been bought out by a consortium and not by major telco players like Telstra or Optus.

Commander's receivers - Peter Henderson, Chris Honey and Joseph Hayes of McGrathNicol – announced that they have sold the local voice integrator’s teleco division to Commander Telecom Group (CTG), for an undisclosed sum.

Claudio Castelli, senior analyst at Ovum told CRN that while at this stage there’s not much information about the interesting new development there are a lot of questions surrounding the ‘mysterious’ group that purchased the local integrator.

“It seems that Commander’s remaining telco business has been acquired by a mysterious consortium formed a couple of days ago for an undisclosed sum,” he said.

“The corporate managed services businesses seem to be part of the deal. Managed services have been growing in Australia and I think this part can offer some opportunities if properly managed and customer confidence is recovered.”

According to a statement by McGrathNicol, CTG was established by a consortium of local and international investors, who specialise in the information, communications and new media sector.

It has advised McGrathNicol that over 400 employees will transfer over to the new owner and CTG plans to continue with the existing core product and service offerings to Commander’s various business markets.

Despite the various rumours leading up to the sale of Commander’s telco division, no local service provider was interested enough to purchase the division.

“I don’t think Telstra or Optus would be interested in Commander,” said Castelli.

“It wouldn’t add much value for them. It wouldn’t complement their existing services portfolio neither add customer base as both already have relations with most of Commanders’ customers.”

McGrathNicol stated that the sale of Commander will be completed by 5th of December. It’s also continuing to make sales arrangements for several of Commander’s non-core businesses over the next few weeks.