Sunday November 14, 7:32 pm Eastern Time
S.Korea's KT Freetel in $600 mln stake sale deal
SEOUL, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Korea Telecom (KT) Freetel Corp said on Monday it had secured over $600 million of investment from Microsoft Corp (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news), Qualcomm Inc (NasdaqNM:QCOM - news) and Canada's Capital Communication (CDPQ).
The South Korean mobile phone operator, an affiliate of Korea Telecom Corp , said in a statement the three foreign companies would purchase new shares equivalent to 9.28 percent of the company's share capital.
It is the largest foreign investment in the history of the country's telecommunications sector. For both Qualcomm and Canada Capital Communication, it is their largest foreign investment ever, KT Freetel said.
Freetel did not give a breakdown of the total investment among the three companies.
In addition to the scale of the investment, a strategic alliance with both Microsoft and Qualcomm has positioned Korea Telecom Freetel to become a leader in the global mobile telecommunication industry, the company said.
Microsoft and Korea Telecom Freetel have agreed to work together to develop a mobile, multimedia-enabled Internet portal service and are working with leading handset makers to develop and deploy a new generation of mobile products, it said.
Korea Telecom Freetel said it was planning to list its shares on the local over-the-counter market, called Kosdaq, by the end of this month. |
