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SingTel ready to rebuild stake in Bharti

Singapore Telecommunications is prepared to demonstrate its support for Bharti Airtel’s proposed merger with South Africa’s MTN by rebuilding its strategic stake in the Indian carrier if its holding is diluted by the tie-up, according to people familiar with the matter.

SingTel owns 30 per cent of Bharti, India’s largest telecoms company by user base, which last week revived exclusive merger talks with MTN aimed at creating one of the world’s top mobile operators.

The merger proposal is being structured as a complex cross shareholding deal, which is being assessed by regulators.

MTN has offered to acquire 25 per cent of Bharti with a cash payment of $2.9bn as well as new shares. Bharti would buy 36 per cent of MTN’s existing shares for 86 rand plus 0.5 Bharti shares per share.

This would take Bharti’s interest in MTN to 49 per cent, while MTN’s institutional shareholders would accumulate close to 11 per cent of Bharti as a result of the share offer.

If the merger is successful, SingTel’s stake in Bharti would fall to 19 per cent, while it would acquire a stake of close to 10 per cent in MTN.

Dealmakers said that SingTel had long coveted exposure to Africa’s under-developed telecoms market and welcomed the proposed deal.

However, people familiar with the situation said that SingTel, which is majority owned by Temasek, the sovereign wealth fund, would be keen to rebuild its stake in Bharti.

Dealmakers expect SingTel to acquire some or all of the 11 per cent block of Bharti shares expected to be offloaded by MTN investors who do not want to hold Indian paper after the transaction.

“If any of those MTN investors want to dump their new Bharti shares then SingTel would be seriously interested in taking it off their hands,” said one person familiar with the matter.

“This is a positive for the deal because it would help support the Bharti share price in the event of a mass sell-off.”

SingTel said: “Discussions are ongoing at this stage and, as stated in Bharti’s press release [last week], SingTel will remain a significant shareholder and strategic partner in Bharti post any successful transaction.”

Were the companies to merge, they would have a combined market capitalisation of about $60bn.

With more than 200m subscribers, they would become the third biggest operator in the world after China Mobile and Vodafone, though their revenue of $20bn would be only about a third that of either of the other two.

Talks in 2008 ended in acrimony. Bharti had claimed MTN had at the last minute introduced a plan that would have made it an MTN subsidiary.

Deutsche Bank and BofA Merrill Lynch are advising MTN while Standard Chartered Bank is advising Bharti.

Источник: Financial Times

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