{"id":549448,"date":"2006-07-07T07:04:52","date_gmt":"2006-07-07T07:04:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/549448-telkom-s-bid-defeated.html"},"modified":"2006-07-07T07:04:52","modified_gmt":"2006-07-07T07:04:52","slug":"telkom-s-bid-defeated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/549448-telkom-s-bid-defeated.html","title":{"rendered":"TELKOM\u2019S BID DEFEATED"},"content":{"rendered":"

A local industrial conglomerate, Transcorp, which is headed by Nigerian Stock Exchange director-general Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, has offered US750m for a 75% holding in the state-owned telephone company. <\/font><\/p>\n

The latest bid follows a rejected offer of 256m for 51% of Nitel by Egypt\u2019s Orascom, which failed to meet the reserve price set by Nigeria\u2019s national privatisation council earlier this year. <\/font><\/p>\n

Telkom has long expressed an interest in taking a holding in Nitel. However, it raised concerns about certain issues it needed the Nigerian government to address. <\/font><\/p>\n

Transcorp, which is partnered by Britain’s BT Group, defeated Telkom and five other bidders. <\/font><\/p>\n

The deal needs the privatisation council\u2019s permission to go ahead. It will be Nigeria’s biggest privatisation deal. <\/font><\/p>\n

Over the past few months the Nigerian government has done a lot to get Nitel into shape. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has ordered all government ministries and agencies to reconcile their outstanding debts to Nitel. <\/font><\/p>\n

Nitel has also committed itself to shed up to 6000 of its 11000-strong workforce. <\/font><\/p>\n

Besides operational problems, Nitel is falling behind in the telecom market. It has only about 500000 working fixed lines in a country of 134m people, and its cellular arm, M-Tel, has only 340000 customers in a market of 10m cellphone users. M-Tel has been left behind by private sector rivals MTN Nigeria, Vmobile and Glo Mobile. <\/font><\/p>\n

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

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\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Telkom has lost its bid for the debt-ridden Nigerian fixed-line operator Nitel.<\/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-549448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549448"}],"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=549448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}