Not interested in bidding for MTN: China Mobile

If one look's at MTN’s statement on Monday, they said that they are in exploratory talks with Bharti Airtel and no reference was made to a situation where they were looking at inviting bids for whatever stake was up on the block.

Having said that, analysts were very worried that we could look at a multiple-bidders entering the scenario which could in a sense push up the acquisition price for Bharti-Airtel, especially because the names that were doing the rounds were companies that at some level were interested in having a presence in Africa.

China Mobile, one of the largest telecom companies in the world has a subscriber base of well over 300 million, has a stated objective of looking at a presence in Africa. But they have told us that even though they are looking at having a presence in Africa, they are not interested in picking up a stake in MTN. Similarly the case with China Telecom, the other big Chinese telecom operator. In a sense, the Chinese threat to Bharti Airtel has also been ruled out.

Orascom, the Egyptian telecom giant - they have a sense of the markets in Africa and the Middle East, they do operate in some of those markets there and many analysts believe that they would also be looking at MTN for putting in a bid. But they have also now ruled out any bids for MTN. So to some extent, it would allay some of the apprehensions of the analysts. So what we are looking at right now is a scenario where in Bharti-Airtel and MTN are in talks with each other and they will then hopefully arrive at a mutually agreeable price and if that doesn’t work out, then possibly we could then look at a scenario where in bidders could come in.

But right now and as of now, it does look as if it is going to be a one horse race.