Singapore Telecom to help fund Bharti's $9b buy of Zain Africa

Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) may help with the funding for Bharti Airtel’s $9 billion acquisition of Zain’s African assets, a senior SingTel executive said on Friday.

SingTel, which owns 32 percent of Bharti, said the acquisition would be financed by debt, and there was no need to inject money directly into its Indian affiliate, SingTel’s CEO International Lim Chuan Poh told Reuters.

“In one way or the other we will be part of the funding, we are a very substantial shareholder of Bharti,” Lim said in an interview. “There’s no compulsive decision that we need to go and spend money to maintain our stake to avoid being diluted.”

Bharti’s bid is inline with SingTel’s ambitions to enter the fast-growing African market to offset its presence in more saturated telecoms markets such as Singapore and Australia.

SingTel, Southeast Asia’s largest telecoms firm and 54 percent owned by Singapore state investor Temasek , has spent S$18 billion in recent years to buy stakes in fast growing telecoms markets such as Indonesia and India.

Source: Reuters