The Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (www.uokik.gov.pl) agreed to the transaction with a stipulation that UPC Poland (www.upc.pl) will sell a part of the Aster (www.aster.pl) chain in Krakow and Warsaw in the next 18 months in order to avoid a monopoly the Polish market. The Aster units must be sold to buyers outside of the UPC capital group.

The initial agreement for this purchase was signed on 5 October 2010 by Liberty Global (www.lgi.com), the parent company of UPC Polska, and the owner of Aster the Mid Europa Partners (www.mideuropa.com) fund. The value of the transaction is 870,00 PLN plus 1.53 million PLN of Aster's debt taken over by UPC.

"The disintegration of the cable branch is causing the strongest players to strengthen their position. That's why it is necessary to build real competition for the giants at the Polish market, like TP SA ( www.tp.pl) or the national satellite platforms. The purchase of Aster commences a long process of the branch consolidation, which a success of the whole community. This scale is necessary for further development on a highly competitive market that we work with," said Simon Boyd, the President of UPC Polska.

At the end of 2011 second quarter UPC Polska had 1.089 million clients, while Aster had 380,000 subscribers. UPC will reveal further details of the purchase and information in October.