Bharti calls its bankers to get ready to pay for Zain buy: Bharti-Zain deal update

Category	:	Corporate News
Headline	:	Bharti calls its bankers to get ready to pay for Zain buy: Bharti-Zain deal update
Date	:	May-28-2010 15:37
New Delhi May 27 In a step that brings India’s largest telecom operator, Bharti Airtel, one step closer to completing its Zain deal as announced in March this year, Bharti said on Thursday that it has asked its bankers to get ready with cash to pay for its $10.7 billion acquisition of Zain''s African operations. The company, in a statement said that "Further to our announcement on March 30, 2010 regarding the proposed acquisition of Zain Africa BV, Bharti Airtel is pleased to report that it has initiated the funds drawdown for the completion of the said transaction.” For its $10.7 billion African endeavor, Bharti tied up $8.3 billion from State Bank of India (SBI) & a few other foreign banks, with Standard Chartered Bank as the lead-arranger and lead-advisor to the deal, committing the highest amount of $1.3 billion to fund the acquisition of Zain telecom''s African assets. Once the deal gets through, Bharti will pay another $700 million after a year, and take a load of $1.7 billion in debt, valuing the buy at $10.7 billion. The lead-arrangers for the deal are Standard Chartered Bank, Barclays, SBI Group, ANZ, BNP, Bank of America-Merril Lynch, Credit Agricole CIB, DBF, HSBC, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. Bharti''s second largest lead-arranger after Standard Chartered Bank is Barclays, with commitments worth $0.9 billion, as the company expects the deal to close soon with the approval process progressing well. 432,717 Bharti Airtel shares were traded on BSE on Thursday the stock closed down 1.28 percent at Rs 260.60, after touching an intraday high of Rs 265.55 & an intraday low of Rs 258.25.

Sent by Mr rahul Chaudhary