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MTN may Extend Talks with Reliance : WSJ
Posted by Yogesh on Monday, 7 July, 2008
South African mobile phone operator MTN Group and India’s Reliance Communications may continue their tie-up talks beyond Tuesday’s deadline, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
MTN and Reliance agreed in May to 45 days of exclusive negotiations to create a global 10 telecoms company, which end on Tuesday. The companies may extend the talks by a few more weeks, the newspaper said in its website edition.
An extension would give Reliance Communications’ chairman Anil Ambani some time to try to resolve a claim of right of first refusal on the telecom’s shares by his estranged brother Mukesh, who runs Reliance Industries, India’s largest company.
MTN, sub-Saharan Africa’s top mobile operator, is nervous about entering a deal with a legal cloud over it and has looked at ways to restructure a transaction, the newspaper said.
The discussions had initially focused on a takeover of Reliance by MTN, but now the companies are weighing the reverse — a takeover of MTN by Reliance, the newspaper said. Source CNBC
