Nigeria Cancels Sale of Nitel - Calls in Reserve Bidder

Published on: 1st Jan 1970: 1:33am

­Nigeria's Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has announced that it will reconsider the reserve bid for the state-owned telecoms network, NITEL after the winning bidder was unable to pay the 30% deposit after the previous attempt to sell the company.

Financial bids for NITEL/M-tel were held last February, and Omen International Consortium emerged the reserved bidder with an offer price of US $956 million. The winning bid came from a UK based company, New Generation Consortium who offered a significantly larger US$2.5 billion for the company, but then missed several deadlines to pay the deposit.

The sale was for 75% of the company, with the government retaining the remaining stake.

The offer from the Omen International Consortium - which is backed by China Unicom - was valid for six months, so the privatisation managers have asked them to resubmit their bid, and if approved, then the sale will go ahead.

Local company, Transcorp bought a 75% stake in 2006 in Nitel for $750 million during an earlier privatization sale, but the government reclaimed the stake in 2009 following several years of neglect.

 

Tags: [nitel]  [china unicom]  [omen international]  [Nigeria]