Bharti ups global play with big stake in UK's BT Group
Bharti Enterprises plans to acquire a 24.5% stake in UK's BT Group for around $4 billion from the British firm's largest investor Altice UK, marking the Sunil Mittal-led company's second major international foray after venturing into Africa in 2010. This will make it the largest shareholder in BT, formerly British Telecom.
In a statement Monday, Bharti said it has no intention of making an offer to buy control of Britain's largest broadband and mobile firm. Bharti is also not seeking a board seat, chairman Sunil Mittal told reporters.
The purchase will be made by Bharti Global, which is the international arm of Bharti Enterprises, through Bharti Televentures. As per the terms of the deal, Bharti Televentures has acquired a 9.99% stake in BT Group's issued capital via open market trade. It will buy the remaining 14.51% after getting regulatory clearances. Mittal expects the deal to close in the coming months.
«Funding is done by Bharti Global… Barclays has been the financial adviser for this transaction, and they provided some immediate cash,» Mittal said.
Neither Mittal nor Bharti Enterprises specified the valuation of the stake buy. But Mittal said the price was attractive and that BT was a $25 billion revenue and $10 billion ebitda company. He pointed to BT's current market cap for an indicative cost of the stake.
The BT stock surged 6.44% to 138.95 pounds on Tuesday, giving it a market cap of about 13 billion pounds ($16.6 billion), from which the figure of $4 billion was derived. The market cap of Bharti
