Monday, November 29, 1999

Quippo-WTTIL plans to sell 2-5 pct stake

News posted by www.newsinfoline.com

Telecoms tower firm Quippo-WTTIL is looking to sell between 2 percent and 5 percent stake to raise funds for growth, a director of the company said on Tuesday."If there is right valuation, if minds meet, why not," Hemant Kanoria told reporters on the sidelines of an infrastructure conference. "There's no hurry for us to do it."Quippo-WTTIL, a joint venture between Tata Tele and Quippo Telecom, was in talks with many investors including Macquarie-SBI Fund, set up by Australia's Macquarie and State Bank of India.The Economic Times had said on Monday Macquarie-SBI Fund would buy a 10 percent stake in the tower firm for $310 million. Based on that valuation, Quippo-WTTIL can raise about $150 million by selling 5 percent stake.Kanoria said the stake sale at Quippo-WTTIL, which owns 39,000 telecom towers, would be of a "small extent" and that there was no need to rope in a strategic investor.Carriers in India's cut-throat cellular sector, also the world's fastest-growing with more than 600 million users have been shedding their tower businesses and renting capacity to cut debt and lower costs.Reliance Communications last month agreed to merge its towers business with that of GTL Infrastructure Ltd to create what it said would be the world's largest telecoms infrastructure firm.Demand for tower assets is set to increase as winners in a recent licence auction start to roll out third-generation services.(Reporting by Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Ranjit Gangadharan)(For more business news on Reuters India click http://in.reuters.com)
News posted by www.newsinfoline.com
Click here to read more news from www.newsinfoline.com
Please follow our blogs

newsinfolinephotogallery
prabugallery
newsinfolinephotogallery1

photogallery1

No comments:

Post a Comment