Cellphone towers ‘for sale across Africa’
MTN Group, Bharti Airtel and French phone company Orange are planning to sell cellphone tower networks in Africa, the latest examples of telecoms operators looking to reduce exposure to costly infrastructure, according to people familiar with the matter. MTN was selling towers valued at $1 billion (R10.8bn) in Nigeria, and Bharti of India was selling about 15 000 of its towers across 17 countries for between $2bn and $2.5bn, said the people, who asked not to be named because the negotiations were private. Orange wanted to dispose of its towers in sub-Saharan Africa and in Egypt, it said. Bharti’s sale was likely to result in a split of the towers between multiple buyers, one of the sources said. – Bloomberg
Banks index hits intraday record
The JSE’s seven-member banks index reached an intraday record yesterday as the outlook for stock gains in Russia and Turkey soured, according to RMB Morgan Stanley. The index climbed by as much as 3.8 percent before pulling back to close trading 2.88 percent ahead yesterday. The biggest gainers included Standard Bank and Nedbank. Within the universe of banks in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, “South African banks rank as one of our most favoured investment destinations this year”, Greg Saffy, a Johannesburg-based analyst with RMB Morgan Stanley, said yesterday. – Bloomberg
Zuma orders SIU to probe Usaasa
President Jacob Zuma has instructed the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to investigate allegations of maladministration at the Universal Service and Access Agency of SA (Usaasa). “The SIU is further authorised to investigate the agency’s funding, by way of a subsidy in the amount of R500 million, to a service provider for the construction and expansion of an electronic communications network for Emalahleni local municipality,” Zuma’s spokesman, Mac Maharaj, said in a statement yesterday. The SIU would also investigate the procurement of services in relation to the Rapid Deployment of Public Access Facilities Programme. – Sapa