Deals
France Telecom Egypt Venture Buyout to Cost $2 Billion
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France Telecom SA may spend about $2 billion to buy most of billionaire Naguib Sawiris’s stake in their Egyptian wireless venture and delist the operator.
France’s largest telecommunications company reached a preliminary agreement with Sawiris’s Orascom Telecom Media & Technology Holding SAE over Egyptian Co. for Mobile Services, the operator known as Mobinil, at 202.5 Egyptian pounds ($33.54) a share, it said today. That’s 8.7 percent less than the price it would have paid under an earlier option agreement with Sariwis. France Telecom will offer the same price for Mobinil shares traded on the Cairo exchange. Mobinil jumped by a daily limit of 10 percent today.