SingTel Indicates Support for Bharti's African Adventure

­Singapore's SingTel says that it may offer financial assistance to India's Bharti Airtel in its attempt to buy Zain's African mobile networks, a senior SingTel executive has told Reuters. SingTel owns just under a third of the Indian company.

SingTel added that the acquisition would be financed by debt, and there was no need to inject money directly into Bharti Airtel.

"In one way or the other we will be part of the funding, we are a very substantial shareholder of Bharti," SingTel's CEO International Lim Chuan Poh said in an interview. "There's no compulsive decision that we need to go and spend money to maintain our stake to avoid being diluted."

However, last month analysts at Deutsche Bank said that SingTel should consider bidding for Zain's assets directly rather than go for indirect exposure to the markets via its holding in Bharti Airtel.

"This is one of the few African portfolios potentially available, and it is not clear how SingTel's shareholders benefit from indirect exposure to Africa," the Deutsche Bank analysts including Hong Kong-based William Bratton wrote in a report. "We are increasingly puzzled by SingTel's international strategy."

SingTel is majority owned by the Singapore government's investment arm, Temasek Holdings.

On the web: Reuters

Article published on 12th March 2010