Etisalat eying South Africa's MTN
The saga surrounding the MTN acquisition continues with today's report that the UAE's Emirates 
Telecommunications (Etisalat) is the latest operator to be linked to activity surrounding the future of South Africa's MTN.
3 Suitors within a Week
"We are always looking for expansion in Africa," Reuters reports Etisalat chairman Mohammed Omran as telling reporters at the ITU Africa 2008 event in Cairo today. "We are evaluating MTN, among other 
companies." As we've been following this effort over the last two weeks with "Now the Dragon eyes the Lion" and "Poaching in Africa: Bharti's Hunting MTN" and the kick off "India Eyes Africa: Bharti target's MTN" there are now 3 potential suitors, Bharti, China Mobile and Etisalat.
Government-owned Etisalat, which operates in 16 countries and has 51 million customers, has been on a four-year, US$5 billion spending spree, setting up mobile operations in Egypt and Saudi Arabia as well as buying a stake in a Pakistani unit. In December last year it said it would buy 16 percent of PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk to enter Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country. It is also started an operator in Nigeria. Clearly this gulf based operation is leveraging it's wealth accrued during this oil and mobile-coms boom.
Meanwhile, Vodafone remains on the side lines and emphasizes it has no plans to make a bid for MTN, despite reports in the UK press over weekend to the contrary.
Arab & State Owned likely in South Africa?
Given the clear state ownership of Etisilat, I'm not sure that one of South Africa's crown economic jewels would be likely to fall into foreign state owned hands. After all MTN happens to be one of the six largest advertising spends in S. Africa, with estimates putting their branding efforts as close to $600 million. It's one thing to have a non-controlling interest, it is another to have outright ownership by a foreign state. Stay tuned. It continues to be interesting.
$17 billion off shore gets no respect in the US
Of course, I haven't seen a peep in any US media outlets mentioning a $17 billion acquisition in the mobile telecommunications space is about to come down. The closest I've seen is "Calling Across the Indian Ocean" a piece in this week's Economist, a British publication.
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