MTN board meet to talk Bharti deal

An empowered group of directors of South Africa-based MTN were scheduled to meet late in the evening on Monday to review the proposed merger deal with Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom service provider. The meeting was to be held in Mumbai.

An empowered group of directors of South Africa-based MTN were scheduled to meet late in the evening on Monday to review the proposed merger deal with Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom service provider. The meeting was to be held in Mumbai.

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Sources said that the meeting would not take any final decision. Under the proposed terms, MTN and its shareholders would take a 36 percent interest in Bharti and the Indian firm would end up with 49 percent of MTN. Bharti would buy about 36 per cent of existing MTN shares at 86 rand each, plus half a newly issued Bharti global depositary receipt, to be listed in Johannesburg, for each MTN share. Bharti and MTN had announced that the deal would lead to a full merger. The merged entity would have more than 200 million customers and combined revenues of $20 billion.