Smart Telecom, the phone and broadband service company which has collapsed twice in recent years, has won the approval of the High Court to exit court examinership and be acquired by the web hosting and broadband company Digiweb. The effective date of the exit is Friday, December 11, 2009. The value of the deal wasn't disclosed nor the cost to stakeholders of Smart Telecom.

Smart entered the examinership process on August 31, 2009 in order to restructure its balance sheet and to secure a strategic investment. The proposals approved by the court include a restructuring of Smart’s balance sheet and the acquisition of the entire business and residential customer base and assets of Smart by Digiweb.

The joint businesses have annual revenues "approaching" €40 million and over 150 employees.

Brendan Hunt, CFO, Smart Telecom said: “We are delighted to have achieved this restructuring combined with an investment from Digiweb which has resulted in our successful exit from Examinership. Smart emerges with a substantially stronger balance sheet and operating profile. The business will be EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) positive and profitable and has no debt maturities for a number of years."

Colm Piercy, CEO, Digiweb: “We welcome the Smart employees to our team and, together with them, look forward to extending our combined market leading services to a growing customer base across each of the residential, corporate and Government sectors of the market.”

He added: “The combination of the Digiweb and Smart businesses makes the enlarged Digiweb Group a truly national telecommunications company, with the network, people and managed services capability to provide real choice in the Irish telecoms market. There are many advantages for our customers who will benefit from an increased range of telecoms, IT and Hosting services, and a single solution provider for all their needs. We look forward to making an enhanced contribution to the competitive communications landscape in Ireland and to growing strongly together in business, consumer and public sector markets.”

Digiweb says it will have total subscriber base of 46,500 business, residential, corporate and government customers for broadband, data and telephony, along with over 48,000 webhosting, domain and data centre clients.