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Nigerians, South Africans buy Starcomms Plc
A COMPETENT source has confirmed the story that CDMA operator, Starcomms Plc has been sold, thereby paving way for the moribund operator to bounce back to life.
Although the source who full knowledge about the business affairs of Starcomms said that the news is yet to go to the press, however the source noted that a consortium of core investors made up of Nigerians and Britons would soon take-over the running of the company have dropped a whopping sum of about $200m (N32.6billion).
As usual, before such big deal is struck, due diligence is carried out, and the source confirmed that the new owners are satisfied with what they saw on ground.
The near clean due diligence report is likely connected with the efforts of the new leadership that took over the company sometime last year.
It was gathered that last year, there was a sweeping change in the company, which saw long-time sitting managing director of the company, Mr. Maher Qubain leaving the service of Starcomms Plc.
But that was after his chief commercial officer, Mr. Tushar Maheshwari, head, brand management, Mr. Manish Singh and marketing director, Mr. Richard Gill have taken a bow out of the ailing firm.
Before their exit, however, a South African, Mr. Logan Pather was employed to block all financial loopholes that seemed to be robbing the company of its fortunes.
These movies were part of the past strategy of the company to get back on the track in the highly competitive telecoms industry, were even public operators have not survived despite huge government funding.
For instance, in December 2010, Starcomms was involved in a sale and lease back agreement with Swap Technologies and Telecoms for 407 of its 557 base station towers.
The $81.4 million transaction was undertaken to urgently savage the company from financial mess, which the rocky terrain of the industry plunge it into.
By that agreement, it means that Swap will take over the mainte-nance of the 407 towers, including the physical structures and power components while $67 million of the sale proceeds was expected to clear off a large chunk of bank debts and take care of growth related issues.
