UAE’s Etisalat wins PTCL bid

UAE based Etisalat has won a 26% stake in PTCL by offering a whooping $2.598 billion dollars or $1.96 per share. Etisalat’s bid overwhelmed China Mobile’s bid of $1.4 billion ($1.066 per share) and Singapore based SingTel’s bid of 1.16 billion ($0.88 per share). With this purchase Etisalat also gets 58% voting rights on the board of directors and a 26% stake of PTCLs profits. After the sale, the GoP now have a 62% stake in the company.

This is Etisalat’s first major acquisition since the UAE government announced an end to Etisalat’s telecom monopoly in UAE.

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June 18, 2005. Government, Telecom. 5 Comments.

5 Comments

  1. haq replied:

    So who gets the money?Business Recorder has a nice sequence of PTCL related events for the past 3 days (the link is to their Telecommunications section, incidentally all the telecommunication news for the past 3 days was centred around PTCL)

    GoP made a bundle off this once considering the price of the PTCL’s share is currently hovering around Rs 65 or $1.06/share!

    Now … who gets the money? Mushy? Leghari? People of Pakistan?

    June 18th, 2005 at 6:07 pm. Permalink.

  2. chowkidar replied:

    RE: So who gets the money?As of Friday’s closing their stock was at Rs67.3. PTCL has about 25% outstanding shares, so at least 25% of that money is going to the shareholders of the company.

    June 18th, 2005 at 11:23 pm. Permalink.

  3. haq replied:

    RE: So who gets the money?I don’t think the public stock holders will see any of the money directly. I spoke to someone tracking the PTCL stock, they said that all the money goes to the GoP, the shares they sold were of a different sort (class B or something). The only way the general public will see any money is if PTCL’s stock price goes up in the market on Monday.

    June 19th, 2005 at 9:39 pm. Permalink.

  4. chowkidar replied:

    layoffs possibleFrom 7 DAYS:

    “While we will redeploy some workers in other operational areas, we will train others to acquire new skills,” said Obaid bin Mes’har, CEO, Etisalat International, the overseas investment arm of Etisalat.

    “But it is inevitable that some flowers will fall off the tree,” he added, alluding to the possibility that some layoffs may be made. Etisalat emerged as the highest bidder in the auction of shares in PTCL, which was delayed after a standoff with workers.

    June 20th, 2005 at 7:18 pm. Permalink.

  5. Amir replied:

    Hope for the BestBut I guess this move is good for the telcom infrastructure in Pakistan and eventually it will benfit the customers.
    And we will see some new and emerging technologies in Pakistan.

    June 20th, 2005 at 9:50 pm. Permalink.