Telecom Italia does not rule out merging its Brazilian operator with a local rival but such a move is not on the agenda for now, its chief executive said after meeting Brazil's president on Wednesday.The meeting between Telecom Italia CEO Marco Patuano and Brazilan President Dilma Rousseff, who faces a tight race to win elections in October, came amid persistent talk of consolidation in the local telecoms market."We can't rule out anything but we are not focused on this at the moment," Patuano told reporters when asked about talk of a potential tie-up between its TIM Participacoes unit and broadband carrier GVT, a unit of France's Vivendi.Brazilian anti-trust authorities are concerned about possible conflicts of interest in the local mobile market, given that Spain's Telefonica SA has a direct and indirect stake in the two biggest mobile firms in Brazil.
Telefonica SA is a Spain-based company active in the telecommunications and digital services sectors. Shares of TEF fell by 0.12% or $-0.0199/share to $16.33. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $13.32 and as high as $18.05. On average, 888634 shares of TEF exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 343860.
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