MTN Group Ltd, Africa’s largest mobile-phone company, may merge with Reliance Communications Ltd, India’s second-biggest, to offer wireless services to 1.7 billion people after talks with Bharti Airtel Ltd collapsed.
MTN, based in Johannesburg, and Mumbai-based Reliance are in exclusive talks for as long as 45 days to combine their businesses, they said in separate statements yesterday. There is no certainty on the completion or the timing of any agreement, they said, without providing details.
Any agreement will depend on whether Reliance chairman Anil Ambani and MTN chief executive Phutuma Nhleko can agree on control of an operator with a combined market value of more than US$65 billion stretching from the Cape of Good Hope to the Himalayas. Bharti ended talks with MTN after failing to overcome differences over ownership and management.
“Reliance may be one company that could possibly do it,” Apurva Shah, head of research at Prabhudas Lilladher Pvt in Mumbai, said by telephone after Bharti’s announcement on May 24.
“If it was tough for Bharti, it will be tough for other Indian companies,” Shah said.
Reliance declined as much as 4 percent in Mumbai trading, valuing it at US$27 billion, while Bharti, India’s biggest mobile- phone company, gained 4.3 percent, giving it a market value of US$38 billion.
MTN slumped as much as 6.4 percent, paring its value to US$36 billion.
Any investment by Ambani will be in addition to the US$6.5 billion he is spending this year to build a second mobile phone network and increase coverage. India added a record 10.2 million subscribers in March and surpassed the US last month as the world’s largest mobile phone market after China.
Reliance began talks to buy a majority stake in MTN, the Business Standard reported on its Web site on May 24, citing people it didn’t identify.
Gaurav Wahi, a Reliance Communications spokesman, declined to specify which company would control the combined entity in a telephone interview from Mumbai yesterday.
Bharti said it ended the talks after MTN presented a new structure in which Bharti Airtel would become a subsidiary of the South African firm. Billionaire chairman Sunil Mittal and Singapore Telecommunications Ltd would have had to exchange their majority stake in Bharti Airtel for a controlling stake in MTN, according to the structure, Bharti said.
The end of the talks is “positive for Bharti’s share price as this lifts the cloud of uncertainty that was hanging over it,” Shah said.
“From a long-term perspective, it is negative” because Bharti would have benefited from the expansion in its operations, he said.
Nhleko has driven MTN’s expansion north from South Africa into 21 countries throughout the continent and the Middle East, covering a region with a combined population of more than 500 million people.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS