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By Ron Coates, 5 June 2003 15:25

NEWS Cable & Wireless has got rid of its final Hong Kong holding for up to £246m, at a 10 per cent discount to the market, but it will still be left out of pocket. And the telco has an ever diminishing chance of realising significant amounts of money for its US operations, having said that it is definitely pulling out of its carrier and internet operations. It has sold Citigroup its 14 per cent stake in Pacific Century CyberWorks. These were part of the price paid for C&W's Hong Kong operations. But the money will not quite be enough to pay off the $700m worth of bonds, backed by the shares that C&W sold on its first attempt to bail out of PCCW. Last year it redeemed $800m worth of the 2001 issue of $1.5bn of bonds convertible to PCCW shares. These shares are now worth only a third of the conversion price, so C&W will have to stump up the rest of the cash. In the meantime, the US is plagued with huge overcapacity in carriers and in data centres, as pointed out yesterday by company CEO, Francesco Caio. The best that US analysts can say is that there are some parts of the C&W operations that somebody will buy. The company is exposed to around £700m in liabilities on property leases in the US.