Shorlist for Telecom Finance 2008 Top Awards Announced

London, January 10 2008: With less than two weeks to go before the opening of the third annual TelecomFinance Conference and Annual Awards ceremony, the organisers are delighted to announce the shortlist for TelecomFinance 2008 Global Deal of the Year, TelecomFinance 2008 Emerging Markets Deal of the Year and TelecomFinance 2008 Leveraged Deal of the Year. The shortlists are as follows:

TelecomFinance Global Deal of the Year
• Weather Investment’s purchase of TIM Hellas (Greece)
• Swisscom’s acquisition of Fastweb (Italy)
• Macquarie’s acquisitions of National Grid Wireless (UK)
• Telefonica-led consortium’s acquisition of a 23.6% stake in Telecom Italia (Italy)
• Vodafone’s acquisition of Hutchison’s stake in Hutchison-Essar (India)
• TDF’s acquisition of Deutsche Telekom Media & Broadcast (Germany)

TelecomFinance Emerging Markets Deal of the Year
• Qtel-Wataniya (Kuwait)
• Zain’s acquisition of Iraqna (Iraq)
• AIG’s acquisition of BTC (Bulgaria)
• Ananda Krishnan’s take-private of Maxis (Malaysia)
• Mobily’s project financing (Saudi Arabia)

TelecomFinance Leveraged deal of the Year
• National Grid Wireless, by Macquarie (UK)
• Get, by Quadrangle, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners (Norway)
• BTC, by AIG (Bulgaria)
• TDF, by Texas Pacific Group (France)

Other awards to be presented at the ceremony are M&A Bank of The Year, Debt Bank of the Year, Media Bank of the Year and Media Deal of the Year. The awards ceremony forms the centrepiece of the premier content and networking rich event for TMT practitioners in finance and investment firms, professional services intermediaries and leadership of telecommunications organisations.

TelecomFinance 2008 (www.tmtfinance.com/tf2008) takes place January 23-25 at the Renaissance Chancery Court Hotel, London and features a dedicated Emerging Markets Summit on January 23 plus a series of content driven sessions with more than 50 speakers on sector critical issues including M&A, debt financing, operator Strategy, Pay TV strategy plus a wireless and disruptive technology leadership panel.

Event sponsors include Pricewaterhousecoopers, Milbank, Linklaters, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Bank, Detecon Consulting, ABN AMRO, Allen and Overy, AMF Ventures, Georgetown Venture Partners and Ventura Team. Media Partners include tWire, FDE, Telco 2.0 and The Mobile World.

To reserve delegate places at the event please visit www.tmtfinance.com/tf2008

Contact Information

Philip Low

Managing Director

BroadGroup

Contact via E-mail