BT silent on Concert report

July 1, 2001 Posted: 2009 GMT

LONDON (CNN) -- British Telecom has declined to comment on newspaper reports it is ready to scrap its Concert joint venture with U.S. partner AT&T.

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said Concert's business was losing up to

£20 million ($28 million) a week and would be split between the two telecom giants, which would seek to keep most of the customers.

A BT spokesman declined to speak about the report to Reuters news agency.

The report comes just two months after the pair said they were in talks that could lead to the pooling of their telecom business services units, including Concert, in a separately-listed company.

BT announced early in May that its share of losses in Concert was £89 million in the quarter ending March 31.

The joint venture provides data communications to hundreds of the world's largest multinationals.

Meanwhile, the Sunday Business UK newspaper quoted AT&T sources as

saying the split would be amicable, but would take a long time to complete as it involves dividing up both software and infrastructure that have been shared until now.

Sales and promotional staff are likely to be axed or relocated to either of the two companies, the newspaper said.

The pair are ready to abandon their favoured solution for Concert's problems: a three-way merger of the business with AT&T Business Services and BT Ignite, which provides high-speed Internet services to corporate customers in Europe, The Sunday Times said.

BT Chairman Sir Christopher Bland told the newspaper in June that Concert's losses were "unsustainable" and the joint venture was his highest priority.

Bland has overseen wide-ranging restructuring since joining BT at the start of May and in mid-June BT closed a £5.9 billion ¥($8.3 billion) rights issue.

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