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Bharti Airtel Ltd has acquired Zain Group’s (“Zain”) mobile operations in 15 countries across Africa for an enterprise valuation of USD 10.7 billion. With this acquisition Bharti Airtel becomes the 5th largest mobile operator in the world. This acquisition will Bharti Airtel to operate in 18 countries across Asia and Africa.

Bharti’s acquisition of Zain’s African mobile services operations covers 15 countries with a total customer base of over 42 million. The total population base covered is over 450 million with telecom penetration of approximately 32%. The countries in which Bharti has acquired the operations are - Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Zain is the market leader in 10 of the 15 countries and second in 4 countries.
Bharti Airtel, India’s largest telecom firm completed acquisition of Kuwait based Zain Telecom’s African business for $10.7 billion (about Rs 48,000 crore).

This buyout not only makes Bharti to put footprint in Africa, but also positioned it as world’s fifth largest wireless company with operations across 18 countries and a subscriber base of around 180 million.

Of the $10.7 billion enterprise value of Zain, Bharti will be paying $8.3 billion upfront and $700 million after a year. It would also take over approximately $1.7 billion of Zain’s debts as on December 31, 2009.

Of the $8.3 billion paid to Zain, Bharti has raised debt from a consortium of foreign banks and State Bank of India with the lead-arranger and lead-advisor Standard Chartered Bank committing the highest amount $1.3 billion, followed by Barclays at $900 million.