MANILA, Philippines - Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) now owns 98% of Digital Telecommunications Philippines Inc. (Digitel) after completing a tender offer to public shareholders.

PLDT said in a statement that nearly all minority shareholders availed of the tender offer of P1.60 per Digitel share or one PLDT share for every 1,559.28 Digitel shares.

The tender offer amounted to P4.6 billion, increasing the total value of PLDT's acquisition of Digitel to P73.8 billion. PLDT earlier entered into a P69.2 billion share swap and bond deal with the Gokongwei group for the latter's 51.55% stake in Digitel.

With Digitel's public ownership now below the 10% minimum requirement of the Philippine Stock Exchange, PLDT will file a petition for the voluntary delisting of the unit.

The law requires any group that buys at least 35% of any listed company to conduct a mandatory tender offer to other shareholders to give them a chance to sell their shares at the same price of the original transaction.

PLDT said a total of 2.888 billion Digitel shares were tendered, representing approximately 94% of the shares held by the public.

Of the shares, 13% or 374 million Digitel shares will be paid in cash, and 87% or 2.514 billion Digitel shares will be paid in PLDT common shares. This translates to the payment by PLDT of about P600 million in cash and 1.6 million PLDT shares.

The tender offer started last Dec. 7, 2011 and was originally scheduled to end on Jan. 9, 2012. However, PLDT extended the offer period until Jan. 16 to give Digitel shareholders more time to participate in it.

PLDT said the settlement of both cash and share transactions with the Digitel minority shareholders will be on Jan. 27.