A battle for the MTN Group, a leading South African telecommunications company, could come down to a clash between the world’s largest and fastest-growing emerging markets.

Bharti Airtel of India, which said that it was in talks with MTN, is expected to face stiff competition from a Chinese rival, say some investment bankers and investors who are close to the development.

MTN, based in Johannesburg, is highly priced because it has nearly 70 million subscribers and is in some of the world’s fastest-growing telecom markets, including Nigeria and Iran.

China and India have often been compared as the rest of the world adjusts to the presence of new economic powers, but rarely have representatives of the two nations competed head to head on a deal.

China’s government-controlled entities have invested and lent billions of dollars to African countries in recent years, while private companies in India have concentrated more on shopping outside the nation’s borders.

Although Indian companies have concluded more big deals, China is buying more foreign assets. In 2007, Indian based companies announced $21.6 billion in international deals, while Chinese companies announced $32.5 billion.

MTN may draw Chinese phone companies, like China Mobile or China Telecom, to the bargaining table, some analysts predict.

Chinese telecommunications companies will be serious contenders in a battle for MTN, said Girish Trivedi, deputy director of Frost & Sullivans telecommunications practice in South Asia and the Middle East. They are stronger financially, have government backing and have some of the largest subscriber bases in the world,” Trivedi said.

China Mobile, with more than 300 million subscribers, is the world’s largest mobile phone company based on the number of users.

So far, a Chinese-Indian showdown is purely in the minds of bankers and analysts. Representatives from the Beijing and Hong Kong offices of China Mobile said they had not heard anything yet relating to a possible bid for MTN.

William Li, the Hong Kong spokesman for China Telecom, said he had also not heard of any plans for a bid.

Some bankers dismissed the idea. China Mobile was interested in MTN a few years ago but did not make a bid because it could not justify the price,” said a telecommunications investment banker based in Asia. The valuations have only gotten higher since then,” he said.

Analysts and experts also do not rule out possible interest from Russia, though no bidders have yet emerged.

Russia’s three top cell phone companies VimpelCom, Mobile TeleSystems and Megaphone are generating excess cash that they cannot invest in their saturated domestic market,” said Philip Townsend, head of research and a telecommunications analyst at the Metropol brokerage firm in Moscow.

In addition to expanding into other former Soviet republics, they are pushing into countries with cold war-era ties to Russia, which would include some in Africa. There are many markets in Africa which are natural markets for Russia,” Townsend said. They’ve got to find a home for their money.”

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