Nigeria's Globacom has emerged as a surprise possible bidder for the 50% stake in South Africa based Vodacom owned by the dominant landline telco, Telkom. Vodafone, which is the other partner in the company has long coveted taking a majority control of Vodacom and has been in talks with Telkom and other investors to boost its holding. A person familiar with the matter said that Vodafone is interested in an additional 12.5% stake in Vodacom, which would give it control with a total 62.5% interest.
Telkom confirmed that it has received a new approach for its holding in Vodacom but declined to say who the bidder is - only noting that it was still in exclusive talks with Vodafone and Mvelaphanda backed consortium over a planned split of the firm.
The consortium is lead by the Mvelaphanda Group, US based private equity firm, Och-Ziff and other strategic investors. The Mvelaphanda Group is headed by former presidential hopeful Tokyo Sexwale.
The deal is reported to involve a complete merger of Vodacom with Globacom, leaving Vodafone with a 50% holding in a much larger pan-African operator.
Globacom is strong in the West African sub region operating in Nigeria and recently opening a network in Benin Republic and soon in Ghana, with several more countries expected to award licenses shortly. Vodacom has robust footprints in the Southern African region, with operations in South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho and Mozambique. Vodafone is also a majority shareholder in Vodafone Egypt.
Any merger might cause problems in Ghana where the two companies would have to either merge their two mobile networks, or more likely hand back the license recently granted to Globacom.
Globacom is also participating in building its own backhaul submarine cable around Africa touching down in 16 countries and linking up to the UK.
Earlier this year, Dubai-based Oger Telecom also started talks about a possible buyout of South Afrcia's Telkom - but the talks broke down in May.
Posted to the site on 1st September 2008
Posted to: www.cellular-news.com/story/33362.php