Egypt’s Orascom Telecom said it has been given permission by the Algerian government to continue talks about selling its assets in that country to South African group MTN.
Cairo-headquartered Orascom Telecom, part of the diverse Orascom group of…
Egypt’s Orascom Telecom said it has been given permission by the Algerian government to continue talks about selling its assets in that country to South African group MTN.
Cairo-headquartered Orascom Telecom, part of the diverse Orascom group of companies, has been hampered in its sales negotiations with the South African group by the Algerian government’s objection to the sale of Orascom’s local Djezzy unit to MTN. As Djezzy is the jewel in Orascom Telecom’s offered assets, generating the largest part of its revenues in 2009, this made the deal much less attractive for the South Africans.
But today Orascom said the Algerian government is prepared to enter into the talks. Orascom spokeswoman Manal Abdel Hamid told Bloomberg that the government has said in a letter that “it will select its representatives and we are waiting for them to invite us to the talks”.
Orascom now expects that to complete the sale of its assets within days, although it stated to the Egyptian regulatory authority today that it had no new material events to disclose on the talks. On Sunday Egyptian newspaper al-Mal quoted Orascom executive chairman Naguib Sawiris saying that “the ongoing negotiations around the acquisition by South Africa’s MTN of some of Orascom Telecom’s African units will be determined within a week”.
