Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel) has announced that it has priced its $600 million 10.5-year notes at 4.5%, with the offering more than three times oversubscribed.
The note is part of the company’s $7.85 billion Euro Medium Term Note programme and will be used for general corporate purposes, including repayment of SingTel’s maturing debts.
BNP Paribas, HSBC and Morgan Stanley acted as joint lead managers and bookrunners while Australia’s ANZ was co-manager.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. will give its investment bankers iPads to offer an additional mobile tool as Apple Inc. expands its domain to Wall Street, intimidating Research in Motion Ltd. in a market it usually conquered.
According t reports citing two managing directors at New York-based JPMorgan, the company believes there are real benefits in the working environment that can be realized using this device – as well as the personal productivity and enjoyment that come as part of the package.
Apple is building on its momentum in the tablet space, controlling its 95% market share to expand from its traditional consumer base into the corporate market as RIM readies a rival device, the BlackBerry PlayBook.
RIM is trying to catch up with Apple as banks including Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group AG unveil applications for the iPad and Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. consider letting employees use iPhones instead BlackBerry.
As per the company’s previous e-mail, JPMorgan, the second-largest U.S. lender by assets behind Bank of America, will distribute iPads free of charge to all associates in its global investment banking division. Employees will get to keep the device as long as they remain at the unit until the pilot program ends on May 1, 2011.
If sources are to be believed, Canadian satellite firm Telesat Holdings Inc. hired three financial advisers to help sell the company for $6 billion to $7 billion.
According to sources, closely held Telesat brought in JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group AG on Nov. 17 to start a formal sales process and offer so-called staple financing to interested buyers.
As per sources, while an auction hasn’t officially begun, Ottawa-based Telesat has been approached by Intelsat SA. Intelsat, owned by private-equity funds BC Partners Ltd. and Silver Lake, has hired Bank of America Corp. as an adviser and may name others to pursue a bid.
Telesat is co-owned by New York-based Loral Space & Communications Inc. and Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board. Telesat calls itself the world’s fourth- largest satellite company.
Sources added that the sale may fetch 8.5 times to 9.5 times Telesat’s projected earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of about $700 million next year. Telesat is being advised by JPMorgan, while Loral, a designer and maker of satellites, is working with Credit Suisse and the pension fund is being represented by Morgan Stanley.
If sources are to be believed, GTL Infrastructure and Quippo are among those shortlisted to buy a stake in Saudi Telecom’s tower business and final offers are likely to be made within the next few weeks.
Saudi Telecom’s tower business is valued between US$1 billion and US$1.5 billion, and it was not yet decided whether the carrier was selling a 49% or larger stake. State-controlled Saudi Telecom has about 10,000 telecom towers.
When asked whether Quippo is bidding for Saudi Telecom’s tower arm Sunil Kanoria, director of Quippo, a telecom infrastructure company told that they working on it.
According to a GTL Infra spokesman in Mumbai, while the company continues to pursue several opportunities for mergers and acquisitions, it would be premature at this stage to comment on any specific target.
Several sources claimed that Morgan Stanley is managing the sale process for Saudi Telecom’s tower business. Towers are masts that mobile operators use in transmitting wireless signals.
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.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Investment bankers have been hired by US-based pre-paid specialist MetroPCS to advise it on the potential acquisition of Leap Wireless. Earlier it was publicly admitted by Leap Wireless that it has appointed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to advise it on a sale as it looks for potential suitors.
In the past also, moves were prepared by MetroPCS for Leap making a USD5.5 billion all-stock takeover offer in September 2007, offering 2.75 of its own shares for every Leap share.
However, the offer was rejected by the board members of Leap Wireless saying it undervalued the company. JP Morgan Chase and Co has been approached by MetroPCS this time in an effort to facilitate a mutually agreeable deal this time around.
www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have been hired by US cellco Leap Wireless to advise the operator on a sale as it looks for potential suitors. A number of potential buyers like MetroPCS, Verizon, and AT&T have been approached by Leap in the recent days.
MetroPCS made a USD5.5 billion all-stock takeover offer for Leap in early September 2007, offering 2.75 of its own shares for every Leap share. However, Leap rejected the offer in mid-September, citing that it undervalued the company.
Google has just announced that it has acquired AdMob, the mobile advertising company, for $750 million.
Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, DFJ and Northgate Capital will see a huge upside from this investment.
AdMob founder Omar Hamoui sent the following letter to customers:
Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.
AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic no interruptions. Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.
After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:
- Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.
- Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.
- Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.
- Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.
Google has written its own blog post announcing the Admob deal:
iPhone and Android users browse the Internet more often than anyone else [Morgan Stanley], contributing to Google’s 5x mobile search growth over the past two years..
And a quarter of these same iPhone and Android users spend nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices [AdMob]
Google has also shown in its press section, what it has currently vis-a-vis where admob is popular today:
Google -Admob
As Google points out, the deal follows similar acquisitions by traditional online companies looking to move into mobile: AOL bought Third Screen Media more than two years ago, Yahoo picked up Actionality and Microsoft bought ScreenTonic.
AMSTERDAM (AFX) – Morgan Stanley has placed 8 mln shares in Royal KPN NV held by the Dutch government at 10.06 eur per share, said London-based dealers.
At 9.44 am, KPN was down 0.20 pct to 10.08 eur, while the AEX was down 0.03 pct to 476.41.
The KPN share initially rose on news of a restructuring plan at its E-Plus operation.
Dealers in Amsterdam confirmed the placement.
Source- http://www.forbes.com
Technorati : KPN, Mobile, Netherland
Ice Rocket : KPN, Mobile, Netherland
