MTN, the South African telco, has entered talks with Egypt’s Orascom Telecom to buy one or more of the group’s mobile phone operations in Africa.
In a release on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, MTN said the company had started discussions that “may or…
MTN, the South African telco, has entered talks with Egypt’s Orascom Telecom to buy one or more of the group’s mobile phone operations in Africa.
In a release on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, MTN said the company had started discussions that “may or may not lead to a transaction”.
Earlier this week, bankers in London said that MTN had approached them to raise about US$5bn to buy assets from Orascom Telecom.
Orascom may sell its Algerian subsidiary, Orascom Telecom Algérie, to MTN following a succession of problems which culminated this week when Algeria’s central bank blocked Orascom from repatriating an undisclosed sum of money back to Cairo.
In February, members of Algeria’s government said that they wanted Orascom to sell its Algerian subsidiary.
Orascom’s executive chairman Naguib Sawiris may sell the group’s sub-Saharan African assets, which trade under the name Telecel, to MTN. The company owns operators in Burundi, Central African Republic, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. MTN would need a lot less than US$5bn to buy the Telecel so the operator, making it likely that Orascom has put the much larger Algerian asset up for sale.
Orascom Telecom declined to comment.
