Apax Partners is close to a deal to buy out fellow private equity firm Warburg Pincus from Odido, the Dutch telecoms group valued at around €6.5 billion, the Financial Times reported.

The transaction, if completed, would end the two firms' joint ownership of the Netherlands' third-largest mobile operator and hand Apax full control of a business that has undergone a full rebranding since the investors acquired it.

Odido is the operator formerly known as T-Mobile Netherlands. Apax and Warburg Pincus bought the business from Deutsche Telekom in 2021, in a deal that valued the operator at roughly €5.1 billion including debt. Deutsche Telekom had been pressed by European regulators to divest the Dutch unit as a condition of clearing its merger of T-Mobile NL with Tele2's Dutch operations, a combination approved in 2016 after an extended competition review in Brussels.

The buyout firms renamed the business Odido in 2023, retiring the T-Mobile brand in the Dutch market. The company provides mobile and fixed services, including fibre broadband, and competes against KPN and VodafoneZiggo in one of Europe's most saturated telecoms markets.

At €6.5 billion, the implied valuation for the current transaction would represent an increase on the price the private equity consortium paid three years ago, a sign that investor appetite for consolidated European telecoms assets has held up despite higher interest rates. Buyout firms have faced a difficult exit environment since 2022, with elevated financing costs suppressing deal volumes across the sector.

The reported deal comes amid a broader wave of private equity activity in European telecoms, where incumbents have struggled to generate share price momentum and infrastructure investors have stepped in around the edge of the market. Dutch telecoms in particular have attracted sustained financial sponsor interest, with tower, fibre and mobile assets all changing hands over the past several years.

Neither Apax nor Warburg Pincus has publicly commented on the negotiations, and the Financial Times cautioned that the talks could still fall apart before a final agreement is signed. The size of Warburg Pincus's stake and the exact price Apax would pay were not disclosed in the report.

For Apax, taking sole ownership would give it a freer hand to steer Odido's strategy, including any future listing or sale of the business. A single-shareholder structure typically simplifies decisions on capital allocation, network investment and potential consolidation moves, which in the Dutch market have historically been constrained by competition authorities' reluctance to reduce the number of mobile network operators below three.

The transaction, once finalised, would rank among the larger European telecoms buyouts of the past year. It would also mark the end of one of the more prominent dual-sponsor telecoms ownerships in the region, a structure that investors favoured in the low-rate era as a way to share the heavy capital burden of network businesses.

A final agreement could be announced in the coming weeks if negotiations conclude as expected, according to the report.