Bharti Airtel’s US$10.7bn acquisition of the Kuwaiti operator Zain’s 15 telecoms businesses in sub-Saharan Africa last month failed to make the first quarter of 2010 the busiest on record for telecoms M&A in Africa and the Middle East.
Zain’s sale of the…
Bharti Airtel’s US$10.7bn acquisition of the Kuwaiti operator Zain’s 15 telecoms businesses in sub-Saharan Africa last month failed to make the first quarter of 2010 the busiest on record for telecoms M&A in Africa and the Middle East.
Zain’s sale of the underperforming assets is the largest telecoms transaction in the region, according to data provider Dealogic.
However, the third quarter of 2009 recorded more M&A telecoms activity than the first quarter of 2010 with companies announcing deals worth US$11.1bn compared with US$10.7bn.
The Zain deal was the only sizeable telecoms transaction in the region in the first three months of this year.
By contrast, the third quarter of last year saw a string of major deals led by the US$7.9bn acquisition of a 50% plus one share stake in Telecommunications Company of Iran by Etemad Mobin, a company affiliated to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
Other major deals included the US$1.7bn sale of a 51% stake in Partner, an Israeli mobile phone operator, to Scailex Corp last August and the US$1.1bn sale of a 64.4% stake in Morocco’s Méditel last September.
On 1 September, Méditel announced that a consortium of FinanceCom, RMA-Watanya and Fipar Holding had agreed to buy the controlling stake in the company.
However, the three Moroccan investors have yet to complete the transaction and last month Mohamed Elmanjra, chief executive officer of Méditel, said that the company had held talks with foreign investors about buying all or part of the 64.4% stake.
Both the third quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010 were much busier than normal for the region. The average value of telecoms M&A deals per quarter since the beginning of 2008 is US$5bn.
UBS is the most active bank since the beginning of 2008 advising on US$16.4bn of deals.