Bharti board to meet as $9 billion Zain deal nears

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Bharti board to meet as $9 billion Zain deal nears

Bharti Airtel's board will on Saturday discuss its USD 9 billion bid for Kuwaiti telecom group Zain's African units, a source said, and the two sides may clinch a deal next week.

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Nigerian dispute

A team of bankers from UBS - which is advising Zain - visited Nigeria with Mittal last week, sources have told Reuters, indicating the parties had worked around the Nigerian problem.

Bharti, 32% owned by Singapore Telecommunications, had earlier played down any concerns over the conflict in Nigeria, but the sources could not specify what solution the two parties had reached after last week's visit.

The escrow account, and the setting aside of part of the payments, now indicate the likely direction of the talks.

Econet, which owns 5% of Zain's Nigerian assets, is seeking to overturn a 2006 deal by Zain - then called Celtel - in which it bought a majority stake in Nigerian mobile operator Vee Networks, now Zain Nigeria.

The South African group was a founding shareholder of Vee Networks and said that its right of first refusal was breached when its Nigerian partners sold the shares to Zain.

Zain is selling the 65% it owns in the Nigerian operations to Bharti, and the Indian group will leave existing minorities in tact.

Other minorities include Broad Communications, which has welcomed the divestment because it thinks Zain has done a poor job in running the company.

Talks between Bharti and MTN Group, which would have created the world's third-largest mobile operator, collapsed for the second time in September over South Africa's reluctance to allow a flagship corporate to lose its national character.