iiNet rumoured to be buying TransACT

iiNet has been placed into a trading halt on the ASX this morning, ahead of an expected buy-out of Canberra-based service provider TransACT to be announced as early as Friday.

A report in the The Australian Financial Review this morning indicated iiNet has been chosen as frontrunner for the negotiations and the companies were likely in final stages of negotiation.

Neither iiNet chief executive Michael Malone nor TransACT's Ivan Slavich would comment on the rumoured sale this morning but iiNet's trading halt suggests imminent movement on that front.

The sale, should it go ahead, would see iiNet pick up 300 TransACT employees as well as residential, business and government services scattered over the providers owned and resold services.

However, the sale would also provide iiNet with major infrastructure components, including an 80,000-subscriber hybrid-fibre coaxial (HFC) network in Ballarat, Mildura and Geelong; as well as an expanding fibre-to-the-premises network in greenfields suburbs in Canberra.

It followed numerous acquisitions made by iiNet in recent years, including regional provider WestNet, Netspace and most recently AAPT's residential customer base for $60 million.