Expansion and merger
In November 1990, the Folketing passed a law that paved the way for a nationwide Danish telecom, spun out from the P&T. The company was named Tele Danmark and was the parent company for the existing regional companies (KTAS, Jydsk Telefon, Tele Sønderjylland, Fyns Telefon, and Rigstelefonen).[2][3]
In 1995, the regional companies were merged into Tele Danmark, and the first nationwide cable TV company, Tele Danmark Kabel TV was created.[4] Five years later, in 2000, Tele Danmark changed its name to TDC.[5]
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, TDC developed from a traditional and mainly Danish provider of landline and mobile telephony services into a Danish-based European provider of communications. Deregulation of the Danish telecommunications market in 1996 created a highly competitive market. In January 2000, TDC got a new logo with five ovals in red, yellow, green, turquoise and blue colour. In December 2000 Tele Danmark changed its name to TDC. At the same time it demerged into a parent holding company and a number of subsidiaries with the purpose of increasing customer focus, creating greater transparency and achieving faster time to market for products and services. In 2004, the Danish telecommunications market was fully liberalized. TDC was partly privatized in 1994 and fully privatized in 1998, and at year-end 2004, TDC's shares were held mainly by institutions and retail investors in Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States.
In 2006 TDC adopted a new logo which consists of a cursive rounded-rectangle in blue colour. The text "TDC" appears in the rectangle and remind that the letter "D" is cut a little bit. A group of private equity firms under the banner Nordic Telephone Company (NTC) offered to buy TDC for a price of about 9.1 billion Euro. Among the group were companies such as Blackstone, Permira, Apax Partners and KKR. The company bought 88% of the shares, but failed to buy more than 90% of the shares and was thus unable to remove the company completely from the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. Also in 2006, TDC pulled out of the UK mobile telephone market, with the closure of their joint venture with EasyGroup, EasyMobile,[6] which had launched in 2004.[7]
In 2007, TDC folded its subsidiaries back into the parent company with the exception of TDC Kabel TV, which continued as an independent legal identity.[8] Later in the year, on 1 October 2007, TDC Kabel TV changed its name to YouSee to signal a focus on more than just TV.[9] In 2010 Nordic Telephone Company (NTC) began the process of selling its shares in TDC on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange, initially reducing its 88 percent holding of the company to less than 60 percent.[10] In 2012, TDC had a total revenue of 26 billion DKK, and employed around 9,000 people in Denmark. In 2014, TDC purchased the Norwegian telecommunications firm Get AS for 12.5 billion DKK.[11]
