Vodafone selling China Mobile Stake for $6.6Bn
Vodafone is selling its 3.2% share in China Mobile for US$6.6billion as it wants to dispose off its minority investments.
Vodafone will return about 70% of the proceeds to shareholders in the form of a share buyback, with the remainder used to reduce the UK group’s net debt, which stands at US$51.398 billion.
Vodafone is ready to sell its entire stake for US$6.63billion before tax to banks led by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS. The banks will sequentially sell the stake on to institutional investors.
According to Vodafone chief Executive, Vittorio Colao, today’s transaction achieves a near doubling of Vodafone’s original investment in China Mobile and combines the stated portfolio strategy with ongoing cooperation with China’s leading telecommunications company.
Although Vodafone’s investors will almost certainly welcome the sale of its China Mobile share, but they are mainly focused on the UK group’s 45% shareholding in Verizon Wireless, the leading US mobile operator.
Per-Second Billing launches in Zimbabwe. Telcos beat deadline set by Regulator.
Zimbabwe’s three mobile network operators have employed per-second billing before the deadline .The telecoms regulator, the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ) had given a deadline for implementing the billing change. The POTRAZ had set 30 September as the deadline
The operators had billed customers for the first minute, then every thirty seconds then. Potraz director general Engineer Charles Sibanda highly praised the mobile operators for achieving the target before time.
According to Charles Sibanda, the deadline expires at the end of September so those that have already introduced per second billing have done well.
As per the new tariff schedule that Econet announced, it will cost between US$0.0035 and US$0.0042 per second for a call depending on the network the customer is calling.
