Mumbai: South African mobile operator MTN Group is in talks to combine with Reliance Communications after rival Bharti Airtel Ltd. called off negotiations with MTN, the Wall Street Journal said.
A weekend report on the WSJ Asia website cited people familiar with the matter as saying discussions were under way, although it added they could go nowhere.
It said it could not learn precise details of the tie-up being discussed but one unidentified person said the deal may be structured as a purchase of Reliance by MTN.
Indian newspapers also reported on Sunday that Reliance Communications, India's No. 2 mobile operator and part of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, was believed to be in talks with MTN about a possible deal. A spokesman for Reliance Communications declined to comment on the reports.
Reliance Communications had a subscriber base of about 47 million at the end of April, the spokesman said.
It reported revenues of 190.68 billion rupees ($4.47 billion) in 2007/08, according to a press release on its website. Most of its customers are on the CDMA platform but it plans to expand its GSM services.
Its market value at the end of trading on Friday stood at $27.6 billion. Its shares closed 2.1 per cent down at 572.30 rupees, underperforming the main Mumbai market index which ended 1.5 percent lower. MTN, which is sub-Saharan Africa's biggest mobile operator, had 68.2 million subscribers as of March while its annual revenue is about $9.6 billion.
Bharti Airtel, India's leading mobile phone operator, said on Saturday it had ended takeover talks with MTN after failing to agree on which company would control a combined entity.
The groups had hoped to create the world's sixth largest mobile operator with over 130 million subscribers in 24 countries after first announcing they were in talks on May 5.
Bharti said it had called off the negotiations after MTN proposed a new structure which would have seen the Indian group becoming a unit of the South African-based mobile phone operator.
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