UK PRESS: Vodafone Likely To Sell Japan Unit To Softbank

TOKYO -(Dow Jones)- Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin is set to announce the sale of Vodafone Group's Japan unit to SoftBank Corp. after dismissing a joint approach from private U.S. equity firms Cerberus Partners LP and Providence Equity Partners Inc, the Daily Telegraph reported on its web site Friday.

The SoftBank deal, which could be announced as early as the first half of next week, will value Vodafone Japan in the region of GBP8.5 billion, the paper said.

Sarin is pressing ahead with the SoftBank deal as he believes the private equity approach could overly prolong the process and provides no guarantee of a sale.

Instead, he is thought to believe that SoftBank offers the certainty of a deal in a way that allows Vodafone to exit Japan as swiftly and as painlessly as possible, the paper reported.

Although Sarin is keen to get as much value for shareholders as possible, he feels the deal with SoftBank does just that, providing money to pay down debt as well as hand back to shareholders.

Vodafone's head of corporate finance, Andre Sokol, has flown to Tokyo alongside advisers UBS to complete the final negotiations, the Daily Telegraph said.

Sarin is keen to exit Japan, where the business is known as Vodafone KK, because of problems the company has faced there.

It has remained in third place behind much larger rivals NTT DoCoMo and KDDI. At the end of February, Vodafone KK had just 15 million subscribers in the country.

Vodafone said last night talks with SoftBank were continuing.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires"

Posted to the site on 17th March 2006