{"id":548583,"date":"2006-04-21T07:12:05","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T07:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/548583-the-race-is-on.html"},"modified":"2006-04-21T07:12:05","modified_gmt":"2006-04-21T07:12:05","slug":"the-race-is-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/548583-the-race-is-on.html","title":{"rendered":"THE RACE IS ON"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celtel, which was itself acquired by Kuwait\u2019s Mobile Telecommunications (MTC) in a US3,4bn deal last year, said at the weekend it had a \u201cconditional\u201d deal to buy 65% of Vmobile for $1bn. <\/font><\/p>\n

The deal is conditional because Econet, which holds 5% of Vmobile, has a pre-emptive right to make an offer to shareholders. <\/font><\/p>\n

Econet spokesman Sure Kamhunga says the company will exercise that right and waste no time in formulating a counteroffer to Vmobile shareholders. The company said on Tuesday it would immediately dispatch a team of 20 experts to begin a due diligence process. This is expected to take about two weeks. <\/font><\/p>\n

Kamhunga says Econet will be able to raise the money it would need to do a deal. <\/font><\/p>\n

Econet CEO Strive Masiyiwa is in fighting spirit. \u201cIt is premature for MTC to say that they have bought the company,\u201d he said in a statement last week. <\/font><\/p>\n

Vmobile has long been courted by players in the global telecom industry, keen to boost their presence in Africa. Vodacom and Virgin Mobile previously formed a partnership to bid for the company, but walked away earlier this year when agreement about a fair valuation couldn\u2019t be reached with Vmobile shareholders. <\/font><\/p>\n

Econet Wireless has also been involved in an arbitration process, triggered by an earlier attempt to sell Vmobile to Vodacom. According to Masiyiwa, this arbitration is continuing. <\/font><\/p>\n

Inet-Bridge ||\u00a0 <\/font>Discuss this article<\/font><\/a> <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

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SA-based Econet Wireless and Netherlands-based Celtel, both Pan-African cellular network operators, will go toe-to-toe in the next few weeks in a bid to acquire Nigeria\u2019s third-largest cellphone provider, Vmobile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"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":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548583"}],"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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}