Oman Telecommunications SAOG (Omantel) announced yesterday the nomination of four new members to the Board of Directors at Mobile Telecommunications Company KSCP (‘Zain’). Including the appointment of Talal al Mamari (pictured), CEO of Omantel, as a Non-Executive Director on September 19, 2017, Omantel will have a majority on Zain’s board with 5 of the 8 seats.
Talal Said Marhoon al Mamari, Chief Executive Officer, Omantel and Non-Executive Director of Zain said: “We welcome the nomination of the four new members to Zain’s Board of Directors. We look forward to working closely with the management teams and our fellow board members with the aim of bringing our two complementary businesses together and creating a new digital telecom powerhouse in the region. The new group has a balanced and diversified portfolio of growth and cash generative assets across nine markets. Bringing these assets together will generate synergies across wholesale, procurement and knowledge sharing along with increased collective exposure to high growth potential markets.”
On November 12, 2017, Omantel won the bid to acquire 12.1 per cent of the issued share capital in Zain, making Omantel the second largest shareholder in Zain with a 21.9 per cent stake. The total equity value is $2.19 billion (RO 845 million) and includes the previously announced acquisition on August 24, 2017 of 9.84 per cent of the total fully paid and issued share capital.
The new group will be the third largest telecoms group in the Middle East and North Africa, with over 52 million customers.
This transformational transaction propels Omantel and Zain into a new era, bringing together a unique portfolio of leading telecom operations with balanced assets for profitability and growth. The transaction will bring economies of scale and sizeable synergies making the new group more agile and efficient.
Synergies will come from integrating the wholesale network with Zain’s, merging operations such as procurement, cooperating across our commercial activities and through shared investments in research and development. Omantel is targeting run rate synergies of over US$ 80 million per annum. Omantel will be fully consolidating Zain’s financials and presenting a combined set of Q4 and full year 2017 financial results in the next quarter.
Omantel will finance this transaction with a combination of long-term and bridge loan facilities. The bridge loan facility will subsequently be recapitalised through bond-type instruments.
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