The Huge Group has received approval from the Competition Commission for its pending purchase of 59% of iTalk Cellular from the Bebinchand Seevnaryan Trust. The iTalk deal was first announced to the press on 12th December 2007. <\/p>\n
The competition commission submission from the parties states that the “target firm is a good fit for the acquirer’s strategic vision and will complement the business of Huge as well as assist in the diversification of certain business risks of the Huge Group relating to mobile termination rates”.<\/p>\n
The Competition Commission has noted that the transaction will create neither horizontal nor vertical competition issues. <\/p>\n
Horizontal issues would entail the creation of significant market share in the least cost routing market post the transaction, which is negated by the fact that iTalk Cellular has no least cost routing (“LCR”) business. <\/p>\n
Vertical issues would be created if the transaction were to result in Huge being able to foreclose iTalk services to its competitors, which again is not the case, as iTalk does not supply competitors of Huge.<\/p>\n
A previous ruling by the Competition Commission, in favor of the Huge Group, notes “a degree of countervailing power by mobile operators against LCR suppliers”. <\/p>\n
In the light of this, the Huge Group’s purchase of iTalk Cellular will be a significant move towards increasing competition in the South African telecommunications market. The remaining 41% of iTalk is owned by MTN.<\/p>\n
Huge Group Financial Director James Herbst comments, “We are delighted to be one step closer to completing this deal, which will be the biggest and most significant transaction by the Huge Group since our successful listing on the JSE last year. We can’t wait to partner with MTN and get started with unlocking the value in iTalk, to the benefit of the South African consumer.”<\/p>\n
Earlier this week the Huge Group announced the completion of another transaction, the purchase of a 25% stake in technology startup Eyeballs Mobile Advertising, which will have a synergistic fit with iTalk. <\/p>\n
The Huge Group recently released a Trading Statement on the JSE SENS, detailing the second upward revision of its profit forecast since listing in August last year. Maiden results for the Group are expected to be released on 27 May 2008.<\/p>\n
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Competition Commission gives Huge approval for iTalk deal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cellular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}