Bharti Airtel Readies For African Immigration Through Zain, Now Ranks 5th

Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom firm completed acquisition of Kuwait based Zain Telecom’s African business for $10.7 billion (about Rs 48,000 crore).

This buyout not only makes Bharti to put footprint in Africa, but also positioned it as world’s fifth largest wireless company with operations across 18 countries and a subscriber base of around 180 million.

Of the $10.7 billion enterprise value of Zain, Bharti will be paying $8.3 billion upfront and $700 million after a year. It would also take over approximately $1.7 billion of Zain’s debts as on December 31, 2009.

Of the $8.3 billion paid to Zain, Bharti has raised debt from a consortium of foreign banks and State Bank of India with the lead-arranger and lead-advisor Standard Chartered Bank committing the highest amount $1.3 billion, followed by Barclays at $900 million.

The rest of the co-advisors — ANZ, BNP, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Credit Agricole CIB, DBS, HSBC, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation — have allocated $600 million each. State Bank of India has agreed to an up to USD one billion loan in rupee terms.