MCI to buy 8 per cent stake held by Global Telesystems
gtl.co.in
(Thursday, December 23, 1999-BS)
Santosh Nair in Mumbai
US-based telecom major MCI Worldcom is close to picking up an 8 per cent stake held by Global Telesystems Limited (GTL) in Global Electronic Commerce Services (GECS) for about $85-90 m or around Rs 360 crore.
When contacted GTL company officials declined to make any specific comments. "We are in talks with quite a few players. It would be premature to comment at this stage," said Fritz De Silva, managing director, GECS.
This is in addition to the five per cent stake sale to financial investors on Wednesday. The board of directors at Global Telesystems yesterday decided to accept an offer from a consortium of investors to buy about 5 per cent of GECS paid up equity capital, held by GTL, for a consideration of Rs 180 crore. The proceeds will be used to retire GTL's debt which is currently close to Rs 160 crore.
The base price for the divestment of GTL's has been fixed at Rs 200 per share.
Under yesterday's deal, the investors, learnt to be a clutch of overseas corporate bodies, have subscribed to unsecured zero coupon non-convertible debentures of GTL, which would be converted t o equity shares of GECS within 120 days of subscribing to the debentures.
The final conversion price will be based on the valuation exercise, which will be completed within 120 days.
GTL vice chairman and managing director Manoj Tirodkar said the promoters of GECS will continue to own their existing their 40 per cent stake in GECS.
GECS builds and maintains enabling infrastructure for business to business e-commerce.
The company owns Global Net, India?s first private digital data switched telecommunications network. It is also the provider of Electronic Data Interchange business messaging solutions. the company's virtual private networks and managed network services are currently used by about 8000 large amd medium sized Indian companies and 1 lakh users within them. |
