Zain Africa acquired by Bharti Airtel

Zain has announced the US$10.7 billion sale of its African operations to Bharti Airtel. Under the agreement, Bharti will acquire Zain’s African mobile services operations in 15 countries with a total customer base of over 42 million. Zain is the market leader in ten of these countries and ranks second in four countries. With this acquisition, Bharti Airtel will be the world’s fifth largest wireless company with operations across 18 countries. Bharti group’s global telecom footprint will expand to 21 countries along with the operations in Seychelles, Jersey, and Guernsey. The company’s network will now cover over 1.8 billion people - the second largest population coverage among Telcos globally.

Zain Africa BV has mobile operations in the following 15 countries - Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. The total population of these 15 countries stands at over 450 million with telecom penetration of approximately 32%.

With this acquisition Bharti’s total customer base will increase to around 179 million in 18 countries. Bharti launched mobile services in India in 1995, Sri Lanka in 2009 and acquired Warid in Bangladesh in January 2010.

Standard Chartered Bank is the Lead Advisor to Bharti on this transaction. Barclays Capital is the Joint Lead Advisor and SBI Group is the Lead Onshore Advisor. Global Investment House KSCC is the Regional Advisor to Bharti on this transaction.