Standard&Poor's today said that Telus Corp.'s (BBB+/Stable/--) divestiture of its equipment leasing business to a trust funded by GE Capital Vendor Financial Services (VFS) for C$147 million has no effect on the ratings or outlook on the company. The transaction is expected to close at the end of September 2001. In a separate agreement, VFS will be the preferred supplier of future equipment financing for Telus customers. Telus has achieved year-to-date proceeds of about C$1.2 billion from the divestiture of noncore assets in 2001 used in part to fund the cash portion of six data and Internet protocol acquisitions totaling about C$335 million, with the remainder used to reduce bank debt. Actual divestitures exceeded earlier expectations by about
