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Tata-Quippo seeks funds to buy Aircel towers
02 December 2009
Tata-Quippo, a holding company which owns mobile phone towers in India, is negotiating private equity support for its bid to take over Aircel’s passive infrastructure
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Tata
Quippo
Aircel
celltowers
Bharti Airtel
Vodafone
Idea Cellular
Maxis
Comment: India is one of the leaders in recognising that mobile phone networks no longer need to own their towers and passive infrastructure. We’ve already seen substantial consolidation in this market, and there will be more.
One of India’s major celltower groups, Tata-Quippo, is likely to get two private equity firms to fund its acquisition of the towers belonging to another Indian company, the operator Aircel.
Tata-Quippo is a telecom tower venture owned by the industrial Tata group and infrastructure company Quippo. It has agreed a New York-based private equity fund, Apollo Management, as one of the two private equity partners. The other partner will be selected from General Atlantic and Carlyle.
The deal will have a ticket size of $1.2-$1.5 billion, with $700 million to $1.2 billion coming from the private equity firms. The buyout firms, in the process, could hold about a third of the merged entity of Aircel and Tata-Quippo.
Tata-Quippo is competing with GTL Infrastructure, the only other player left in the competition to buy Aircel’s 12,000 towers. Other bidders included Indus — a joint venture between Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular — and Reliance Infratel.
Malaysia’s Maxis Communications, which owns 74% of Aircel, has hired Standard Chartered, Nomura and Rothschild as advisors to sell the tower assets of its Indian unit. GTB