BizNomic

Bharti Airtel, India’s largest mobile phone operator by subscribers, said on Sunday that it has tied up $8.3 billion in funding to buy most of the African assets of Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Co. This takes it yet another step closer to concluding the deal, for which they had made an attempt in February. The deal is estimated to be about $9 billion in cash. It marks the Indian company’s latest attempt to enter a fast-growing overseas market as intense competition and price wars shrink its growth at home.

While Standard Chartered PLC is the lead arranger and adviser for $7.5 billion in financing, with Barclays Bank PLC as a joint lead adviser, other co-arrangers and advisers include State Bank of India Group, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd, BNP Paribas S.A., Bank of America Merrill Lynch , Credit Agricole CIB, DBS Bank, HSBC, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., Bharti said.

(more…)