Qatar sovereign fund buys $1.2b stake in Bharti Airtel

Bharti Airtel said the deal will strengthen its capital structure and provider further flexibility in terms of delivering on its growth strategy.

The company increased its debt burden when it bought Zain's African telecom operations for $9 billion in 2010. Profit has fallen in each of the three years since then. It had $11.7 billion in net debt as of end-March.

The company recently announced that it would increase its stake in Bangladesh's Warid Telecom, part of the Abi Dhabi Group, to make it a wholly-owned subsidiary.

Bharti Airtel has operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa, with more than 271 million subscribers for the year ending March 2013, up 8% year-on-year. It ranks number four among the top mobile service providers globally by subscribers.

Parent company Bharti Telecom currently controls 45.70% of Airtel, while SingTel is the second-largest shareholder, via wholly-owned subsidiaries Pastell (15.57%) and Viridian (0.22%). 

The Qatar Foundation Endowment is a recently established arm of the Qatar Foundation, which acts as a long-term investor with a broad mandate to make direct and managed investments. Goldman Sachs advised the endowment on the Bharti Airtel deal.

Another unit of Bharti Group, Bharti Infratel, is reportedly looking to sell a 25% stake in its satellite television business. Last December, Bharti Infratel raised around INR4.17 billion in India's biggest IPO in two years.

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• Topics
• Expansion
• South Asia
• Technology
• Qatar Holdings
• Growth capital
• TMT
• India