Bharti Airtel has made a $10.7 billion bid for Zain’s 14 African mobile businesses excluding Morocco and Sudan, as part of its efforts to grow outside of India. In an official company statement, Bharti said that it had entered into “exclusive discussions with Zain” that will last until March 25th, but gave no guarantees that a deal would be made. Bharti’s shareholders, however, don’t seem confident the company will be able to monetize the potential acquisition properly, thus the carrier’s share prices fell as a response to the news.
It’s important to add that India’s largest mobile operator have tried to enter the African market in the past. It has twice entered into merger talks with the Johannesburg-based MTN but discussions led nowhere.
Zain on its end has recently got a new CEO after failing to make money out of its fast-growing yet loss-making African networks, which BTW account for over 60% of all Zain customers.
In addition to Bharti, France’s Vivendi and UK’s Vodafone have also been rumored as potential buyers of Zain’s African businesses.
And for the record, Bharti keeps adding over 8 million new connections per quarter in India, but is not making that much money due to looming price wars in the country.
[Via: MobileBusinessBriefing]