Vodafone plans to invest Rs 80 billion in proposed joint venture with Idea
.jpg)
British telecom major Vodafone plans to invest €1 billion or about Rs 80 billion in the proposed joint venture with Idea Cellular, which is expected to be in place this month, according to its annual report.
The British telecom operator will look at monetising its stake in Indus Towers if it requires to make additional investment in India, in case the Aditya Birla group decides to put in additional fund in the proposed merged entity, Vodafone Idea Limited.
“Idea’s equity raise of €0.8 billion in January 2018, which Vodafone Group will match at the time the merger closes; combined with other adjustments, we currently estimate a net capital injection into India of up to €1 billion at closing in June 2018,” Vodafone chief financial officer Nick Read said in annual report.
The merger of Vodafone with Idea is in last leg of government approval, in which the the British firm is expected to have not more than 47.5 per cent stake.
The merged entity will be largest telecom operator in India, with a subscriber base of around 430 million.
“The company’s financial leverage is currently high on a pro-forma basis. In the event that in the future the joint venture partners decide to put in additional funding, the Group would draw upon the value of its stake in Indus Towers,” Vodafone said.
The company has 42 per cent stake in India’s largest mobile tower firm Indus Towers. Indus Towers paid dividends of €138 million to the Vodafone Group during 2017-18.
On April 25, 2018, Vodafone, Bharti Airtel Limited and Idea announced the merger of Indus Towers into Bharti Infratel.
Bharti Airtel and Vodafone will jointly control the combined company, and Vodafone will be issued 783.1 million new shares in the combined company, in exchange for its shareholding in Indus Towers.
The Indus Tower-Bharti Infratel deal has given Idea Group to sell its full 11.15 per cent shareholding in Indus Towers for cash, which would be equivalent to a 29.4 per cent shareholding in the combined company.
Other Latest News
.webp)
Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday hit out the BJP, saying that by inducting former Congress leader Ashok Chavan, the ruling party has also become a part of the multi-crore Adarsh Housing Society scam now. Earlier, the BJP used to target Chavan saying the families of martyrs were fooled in the Adarsh scam, but now the same party is involved in fooling them, he alleged.
Thackeray was addressing a press conference at Nanded in Maharashtra, where he arrived to campaign for the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) candidate Vasant Chavan from the Nanded Lok Sabha constituency.
.webp)
Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of US banking giant JPMorgan Chase, has praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi and berated the “liberal press” for criticising him.
Dimon, in a webinar hosted by The Economic Club of New York, praised Modi's government for alleviating poverty and implementing reforms. “Modi has done an unbelievable job in India. I know the liberal press here; they beat the hell out of him. “He has taken 400 million people out of poverty," Dimon was quoted as saying.
.webp)
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday released a compiled master direction raising the minimum capital requirement for asset reconstruction companies (ARCs) to begin securitization to Rs 300 crore from Rs 100 crore as on October 11, 2022.
The central bank said that the regulation would be effective from April 24, 2024. ARCs, as on October 11, 2022, have been provided a glide path to achieve the minimum required Net Owned Fund (NOF) of Rs 300 crore.
.webp)
Reliance Jio has become the world's largest mobile operator in data traffic consumption, surpassing China Mobile. According to global analytics firm Tefficient, the Indian telecom operator's total traffic reached 40.9 exabytes in the January-March quarter, compared to China Mobile's 38.
Jio also has the second-largest 5G subscriber base globally, with 108 million users. More than 28 per cent of its total wireless data traffic is now consumed by 5G users, said the company in an analyst presentation.
.webp)
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of waiving off loans worth Rs 16 trillion of his billionaire friends, and said the country will never forgive him for this "crime".
In a post in Hindi on X, he said this money could have been used to cure the pain of Indians but was spent on creating hype for the ilk of those like 'Adanis'.
.webp)
.webp)
.webp)
.webp)
.webp)
