Tony Lacavera and West Face buy Wind Mobile from VimpelCom

Wind Mobile founder Tony Lacavera will partner with Canadian private equity firm West Face Capital and others to buy out Wind's majority shareholder, foreign telecom conglomerate VimpelCom Ltd.

The move brings a tentative end to a multi-year drama in which the Russian-Dutch company has been trying to offload its sliver of Canada's wireless market, which it acquired when it bought Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris's company Orascom, which was Wind Mobile's original financier before it launched in 2009.

After word of a deal emerged in Canadian media on Monday,VimpelCom confirmed it has sold its stake in Globalive (the company that owns Wind) for $135 million but the new owners will also assume about $150 million worth of debt.

• Wind Mobile seeks deep-pocketed partner
• Wind Mobile backs out of 700 MHz spectrum auction

The deal came about after prolonged negotiations, Lacavera told CBC News in an interview Tuesday. "VimpelCom has been assessing alternatives for a long time after it was turned down when it applied for control," he said. "Parties that ended up in the consortium all came together over a long time."

The investment group now takingcontrol of a Wind Mobile also includes Tennenbaum Capital Partners, LG Capital Investors, Serruya Private Equity and Novus Wireless Communications subject to regulatory approvals. (Novus Wireless Communications applied to bid in a recent government auction of wireless spectrum, but was unsuccessful.)

"With stable, long-term ownership and secure financing, Wind Mobile is moving into an exciting new phase," Lacavera said Tuesday.

Lengthy process

The so-called "Big 3" of Canadian wireless Rogers, Bell and Telus collectively control about 90 per cent of the market. Lacavera has been trying to position Wind as a legitimate, national rival to that blocsince launching the company in 2009.

But Wind has been hampered along the way by financial hurdles especially lately when its reluctant partner VimpelComrefused to sign off on paying for the expensive wireless spectrum that the company needed to expand earlier this year.

Wind's complicated ownership structure made it so that Lacaveraowned a majority of the equity in the company, even as the foreign backers controlled the money. It's not yet known how the new deal would redistribute control, but Lacaverafigures to feature prominently.

Wind currently has about 750,000 customersconcentrated in populated areas of Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia,but requires access to one of the Big three's national networks or partnerships with other small carriers, and likely will for some time to come. It also wants to invest in additional spectrum licences.

Greg Boland, president and chief executive officer of West Face Capital, said in the statement that the government's support for long-term competition in the wireless sector "has not gone unnoticed by the investment community."

• Wind Mobile cuts roaming rates

Industry Canada has taken a number of other steps that have been favourable to Wind including capping how much the big three carriers can charge for traffic that use their larger national networks but Wind's access to foreign investment for further growth was hurt by Ottawa's decision to block VimpelCom from buying Lacavera's portion of the business last year.

What remains to be seen is whether Wind's new owners plan to spend a little cash to beef up their new acquisition in order to truly compete on a national scale. At least one telecom analyst said Tuesday he suspects the plan will likely to be sit tight, maintain the status quo and wait for the earliest chance to flip their asset to one of the incumbents.

"We assume that private equity may just want to operate the asset with modest incremental funding until rules change, and Windcan be sold to an incumbent, perhaps after the 2015 Canadian federal election," Canaccordanalyst Dvai Ghosesaid.

But Lacaverapoured cold water on the notion that the company's or his partners' long-term plan is simply to stick around long enough to sell out to a bigger rival.

"[There are] noplans for a sale to an incumbent," he said. "We will continue to deliver on our brand promise. We have never been the cheapest, orthe most expensive, or the fastest [but]we offer good value."