Thursday, Apr 25, 2013

(FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 4/25/13) 


   By Sam Schechner and Rory Jones

Two Persian Gulf-based telecom companies made dueling bids Wednesday for Vivendi SA's African telecommunications business, marking a crucial turning point in the Paris-based conglomerate's effort to slim down into a smaller company focused on media assets.

Emirates Telecommunications Corp. and Qatar Telecom each said they have made binding offers for Vivendi's 53% stake in Maroc Telecom after a monthslong process that has winnowed down the field of potential bidders and culminated, according to people familiar with the matter, in the lobbying and wooing of Morocco's king in recent weeks.

The kingdom must approve any new owner as it holds a 30% blocking stake in Maroc Telecom, which has operations across West Africa.

It remained unclear how much Qatar Telecom, known as Ooredoo, or Emirates Telecommunications, dubbed Etisalat, have offered for the business, or how far apart their offers are. Vivendi has been seeking at least 5.5 billion euros ($7.16 billion) for its stake in the carrier.

A sale could set off a broader shift at Vivendi. It would use the proceeds to pay down debt, freeing it up for a long-discussed spinoff of other telecommunications businesses, according to the people familiar with the company's thinking.

Vivendi said it would now take "the coming weeks" to examine the bids, with one of the people familiar with the matter saying the company's only criterion is price.

"We're not going to sell off our assets at just any price," a Vivendi spokesman said. "We're not in a hurry."

The bids by Etisalat and Ooredoo are critical to both companies' ambitions to expand overseas as revenue in their core Gulf markets plateaus. In the past year, Ooredoo has been increasing its stakes in subsidiaries across the Middle East, and it is now consolidating all its assets in such countries as Iraq, Oman and Tunisia into the Ooredoo brand.

Etisalat's bid is its first potential acquisition since its bid for Kuwait's Zain Group fell apart in 2011. Both bidders have subsidiaries in French-speaking Africa that analysts say could marry well with Maroc Telecom and its assets in the region.

For Paris-based Vivendi, selling Maroc Telecom would be a key step in an overall strategic shift to concentrate on a smaller lineup of media assets that its chairman, Jean-Rene Fourtou, believes would be better valued on the stock market. On the media side, Vivendi owns Universal Music Group, French TV company Canal Plus and a majority stake in videogame giant Activision Blizzard.

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Dana Cimilluca contributed to this article.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

25-04-13 0353GMT