Bharti Airtel: Deny Reports Of Any Agreement With MTN
MUMBAI -(Dow Jones)- India's largest cellphone company Bharti Airtel Ltd. (532454.BY) late Wednesday denied reports it had reached an agreement with South African telecom company MTN Group (MTN.JO).
News agency Bloomberg reported earlier Wednesday that Bharti Airtel had reached a $24 billion preliminary agreement with MTN to buy each other's shares, citing people familiar with the deal.
The report said Mumbai-listed Bharti had increased the cash portion of the deal to $14 billion.
"We would like to categorically deny that any such agreement has been reached between the two companies," Bharti Airtel said in a email statement."The discussions are still on," the statement added.
The two companies are negotiating a deal which could create the world's third-biggest cellphone company by subscribers. The talks began in late May, almost a year after similar discussions collapsed, and have twice been extended by a month to the end of September.
