Bharti may receive funding from SingTel for Zain acquisition'

Bharti Airtel may receive funding from Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) in its bid to acquire Zain's African assets, according to a senior SingTel executive.

SingTel is Southeast Asia's largest telecoms firm and owns 32 per cent of Bharti. It said the acquisition would be financed by debt, and it need not dilute its stake in its Indian affiliate and neither was there any need for it to inject money directly into Bharti.

Lim Chuan Poh, CEO of Singtel's international operations told Reuters that in one way or the other SingTel would be part of the funding, and the company was a very substantial shareholder of Bharti.

In exclusive talks until 25 March for the Kuwaiti firm's operations in 15 African countries, Bharti and Zain are understood to have put an enterprise value of $10.7 billion for the assets, including $1.7 billion of debt on Zain Africa books.

According to analysts Bharti is betting on a significant improvement in Zain's operations, with there being significant scope of improvement in Zain, not just in mobile but in fixed line and the corporate markets also.

Singapore state investor Temasek holds a 54-per cent stake in SingTel, which has spent $18 billion in recent years to buy stakes in fast growing telecom markets including India and Indonesia.