Billionaire tycoon Tan Sri Vincent Tan has agreed to offload a 33% stake in U-Mobile to Singapore Technologies Telemedia (STT) for US$184m at a price of MR5 per share.
In 2009, NTT DoCoMo and KTF sold their 16.5% holdings in U-Mobile to Tan’s parent firm…
Billionaire tycoon Tan Sri Vincent Tan has agreed to offload a 33% stake in U-Mobile to Singapore Technologies Telemedia (STT) for US$184m at a price of MR5 per share.
In 2009, NTT DoCoMo and KTF sold their 16.5% holdings in U-Mobile to Tan’s parent firm U Television, pocketing US$100m each in the process. The deals left U Television with a 96% stake.
When Tan bought back the stakes he raised the cash via loans from AmBank, to which he pledged U Mobile shares as collateral.
Tan then signed a put option with Multi-Purpose Holdings (MPH) – which holds 3.96% in U-Mobile – to counter any potential defaults on those loans. It stipulates that MPH has up to 13 months from September 2009 to buy a 41.63% stake in U-Mobile for US$80m.
STT, a unit of Singapore state-owned investment giant Temasek Holdings, also owns Singapore’s second largest telco StarHub and Irish incumbent Eircom.
Tan controls the Berjaya group of companies and is worth an estimated US$1.3bn.
U Mobile has a 4% share of the Malaysia’s mobile market.
