MTN set to acquire Visafone
Africa’s biggest telecommunications brand, MTN Group Ltd has initiated process to acquire Visafone Communications Limited of Nigeria as it deepens its dominance in Nigeria’s telecoms market. Nigeria is the company’s largest market on the African continent.
Following intelligence and media sources close the acquisition deal, the largest telecoms band has been looking at possible ways to augment its revenue from its South African base where Vodacom Group Ltd holds sway because of their superior subscriber base.
In what seems to be an implicit confirmation of the deal, a spokesperson for MTN Nigeria, Mrs Funmi Onajide says in Lagos that “We will send a holding statement at the appropriate time.”
Another official of MTN Nigeria who pleaded to remain anonymous because he was not given permission to speak on the issue said, “It is true. We are talking. The deal is likely to work and we shall come out to make an official statement about the deal soonest.”
However, all attempts to get substantive confirmation on the proposed deal from the Corporate Communications Executive of Visafone, Mr Joesph Oshiagle were unsuccessful.
The MTN Group according to South African based media company, Bloomberg, had 59.9 million subscribers in Nigeria at the end of 2014, more than a quarter of its total 223 million subscribers across 22 countries globally. Meanwhile, Visafone, a Lagos based communication firm was founded by Nigerian businessman and founder of Zenith Bank, Jim Ovia in 2007.
Visafone, which is a wireless network provider, had about 2.2 million subscribers as at December 2014 according to statistics released by the Nigerian Communications Commission. However, the company has continuously lost ground in the telecoms sector as it remains a less fahionable Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) category and has been under stern competition from the GSM telecom operators such as MTN Nigeria, Globacom, Airtel, and Etisalat.
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