1 July 2009
Europe's largest entertainment group Vivendi may acquire Zain Africa, indications have emerged.
Kuwaiti telecoms company Zain is prepared to sell its African operations after receiving several offers including one from Vivendi, Reuters reported yesterday.
Zain Nigeria could not confirm the story. The spokesman Emeka Oparah of the company in Nigeria told Daily Trust that he was not in a position to comment on it.
Zain has a 15 million subscriber base in Nigeria.
The chief executive of Zain Africa declined to comment on June 23 on rumours the business may be sold to Vivendi.
Zain has in the past seven years been owned by different operators and had changed names severally.
It had transformed from Econet Wireless Nigeria to Vodacom to V-mobile, then to Celtel and to Zain. Celtel was founded by Sudanese-born Mo Ibrahim in 1998 and sold to Kuwait's MTC (now Zain) in April 2005 for $3.4 billion.
"Zain has no objection to go ahead with the deal in case the offered price was in line with the level Zain wants," Assistant Chief Executive for Business Development and Government Relations Barrak al-Subeih told Kuwaiti daily al-Anbaa in remarks published yesterday.
Vivendi would not comment on the report.
If Zain, Kuwait's largest mobile operator, sold its African operations it would look for expansion opportunities in other areas with higher growth rates such as the Middle East or the Far East, the paper quoted al-Subeih as saying.
Subeih said, without specifying, that he expected Zain to post an "exceptional" profit in the second quarter compared to the 2008 period, the paper reported.
Last month, Zain chief executive Saad al-Barrak said he expected second-quarter net profit to be close to the 75.7 million dinars ($263 million) it made in the first quarter, but the cost of investments would weigh on the bottom line.
Zain, whose biggest shareholder is Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund, has been spending heavily to expand and operates in 23 countries in the Middle East and Africa.
It has spent more than $12 billion in Africa since 2005, including nearly $3 billion in Nigeria, and said it planned to spend up to $2 billion more on the continent this year.
Nigeria's Business Day reported that Zain was looking to sell its African business and would study bids made by other companies if no deal was reached with Vivendi.
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