Sunrise seeks to compete on price after $6.3 billion UPC deal

ZURICH (Reuters) - Swiss telecoms group Sunrise wants to crank up price competitiveness following its 6.3 billion Swiss franc ($6.3 billion) takeover of Liberty Global's Swiss unit and also expects job cuts from the deal, Chief Executive Olaf Swantee told Reuters on Thursday.

"Our strategy at Sunrise won't change, but will be bolstered," Swantee said. "We compete first and foremost through quality, secondly through innovation but thirdly and also very clearly through value for money. Because we will now have our own network infrastructure and TV platform, we will be able to boost that."

The purchase of Liberty's UPC Switzerland, to be accompanied by a 4.1 billion francs rights issue, bolsters Sunrise's position as Switzerland's second-largest telecoms company, and creates a bigger challenger to market leader Swisscom.

Stakeholder Freenet -- which holds about a quarter of Sunrise's shares -- has not yet decided whether it can or will take part in the rights issue, Sunrise Chief Financial Officer Andre Krause told Reuters in the same call.

($1 = 0.9946 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Angelika Gruber; writing by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi)

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