We know that Telefonica and China Unicom already have great business relations. That, however, is not enough as the two companies announced strengthening of the partnership in a deal that will see the Spanish group increasing its stake in China Unicom to 9.7%, while Unicom’s holding in Telefonica will increase to 1.37%. Both companies will pay $500 million for the privilege.
Also as part of the deal, Telefonica will propose that China Unicom names a representative to its own board — Telefonica’s chairman Cesar Alierta already sits on China Unicom’s board.
This latest deal builds on top of the agreement struck between the two companies in September 2009, when each company invested $1 billion in the other party’s shares as part of the “Strategic Alliance Agreement.” The new statement says that the goal is to “deepen their cooperation in areas such as procurement, mobile service platforms, services to MNCs, wholesale carriers, roaming, technology, among others.” We’ll see how that goes…
[Via: MobileBusinessBriefing]