UPDATE 4-Doubts grow over $2.5 bln Nigerian telecoms sale

Thu Feb 18, 2010 5:53pm GMT

[-] Text [+]

* Privatisation agency says bid still stands

* Nigerian firm says backed by Dubai company

* Unicom has little or no record of overseas M&A (Adds comment from Nigerian privatisation agency)

By Matthew Tostevin and Doug Young

ABUJA/HONG KONG, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Doubts surfaced over the planned $2.5 billion sale of Nigeria's former state telecoms monopoly on Thursday when China Unicom denied involvement in bidding in the African country's biggest privatisation.

But Nigeria said the bid for a stake in of one of the world's fastest growing telecoms markets still stood and GiCell Wireless, the small Nigerian operator fronting the bid consortium for Nitel, said financing was coming from Dubai rather than China.

"We didn't pull all this out of the air," Usman Gumi, managing director of GiCell, told Reuters.

The confusion over Nitel's sale highlighted the unpredictability of cross-border African telecoms deals at a time India's Bharti Airtel Ltd is bidding $9 billion for the African assets of Kuwait's Zain.

When Nigeria's National Council on Privatisation announced its preferred bidder on Tuesday, it named Unicom, China's No. 2 carrier, as part of the New Generation Telecommunications Ltd. consortium along with the Minerva Group from Dubai. Continued...

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