Kuwait based Zain has confirmed that it has received an offer from an unnamed group to acquire its operations in Africa excluding Morocco and Sudan. The company declined to name the bidder, although local media reports suggested that it could be India's Bharti Airtel.
Kuwait's exchange suspended trading in Zain shares pending a board meeting to discuss the offer, the Kuwaiti stock exchange added in a separate statement.
Kuwait's Al Rai newspaper had reported yesterday (Sat) that Bharti Airtel has offered around US$10.7 billion for the former Celtel networks. Zain acquired the pan-Africa Celtel for $3.4 billion in 2005.
Zain has been repeatedly seeking to either sell the African networks, or take an outside investor into the whole company for well over a year. Tensions between the main shareholder, the Kharafi Group and the management of the company resulted in the sudden resignation of Zain's CEO last week.
Following the collapse of long running talks with France's Vivendi, the Kharafi Group claimed to have secured an agreement with a mystery Indian company, Vavasi Group which ended up raising more questions than it answered about the future of the company.
No comments:
Post a Comment