India's Bharti Airtel Acquires Zain's African Networks

India's Bharti Airtel completed its previously announced acquisition of Zain's mobile operations in 15 countries across Africa for an enterprise valuation of US$10.7 billion.


The acquisition positions Airtel as one of the world's top five mobile operators with 180 million customers, operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa. It's network footprint covers over 1.8 billion people. The company will have combined revenues of over US$12.4 billion and EBITDA of over US$ 4.7 billion, based on the last audited results.


Bharti's acquisition of Zain's African mobile services operations covers 15 countries with a total customer base of over 42 million. The total population base covered is over 450 million with telecom penetration of approximately 32%. The countries in which Bharti has acquired the operations are - Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Zain is the market leader in 10 of the 15 countries and second in 4 countries.


For Zain, the sale resulted in aggregate net cash proceeds of US$8.968 billion. As at 8th June 2010, Zain confirms that it has received US$7.868 billion of cash proceeds from Bharti. The rest is due over the next 6 months. Zain has also licensed the use of the "Zain" brand and related trademarks to Bharti in all 15 African operations for an interim period.


Zain will now focus on its Middle Eastern operations, investing in new growth opportunities in existing markets of Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. In Lebanon, the company manages "mtc-touch" on behalf of the government. In Morocco, Zain has a stake in Wana Telecom through a joint venture.
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