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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (9455)	11/8/1999 1:37:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

Chandra to sell 25% in SitiCable for $150 mil to global investment Banker. SitiCable siticable.com (Siti Cable serves 4.5 million homes in 43 cities, making it the largest Cable TV Networking in India with approximately 8000 Km. of Cable Plant. It has approx. 25% market shares of the India's C&S homes. Its market share in the metros is more than 50%... SitiCable will be providing Internet Connection nationwide with cable network) ======================= Chandra selling 25% in Siti (Tuesday, November 9, 1999) Anjan Mitra in Mumbai-BS Subhash Chandra, promoter of Zee Telefilms Ltd (ZTL), is close to clinching a deal to offload about 25 per cent stake in Siti Cable for a total consideration of over $ 150 million to an undisclosed insurance and investment banker. Banking sources said the interested investor is one of the top five insurance and investment bankers in the world and has "offered" to pick up about 25 per cent stakes in Siti Cable considering worldover cable companies are being highly valued because IT-related services can be delivered over cable more easily because of increased bandwidth available. The sources said the proposed investor(s) has reckoned the value of Siti Cable in the range of $ 800 million. However, Deolite & Haskins had evaluated a Rupert Murdoch company's 50 per cent shareholding in Siti Cable at $ 47.79 million --- a figure at which Chandra is buying out the stakes. Though Zee was not available for comments, the sources said the proposed investor and Zee may (rpt: MAY) sign the deal very soon unless Chandra hikes the asking price for stakes in Siti Cable. Chandra in a recent interview to Businesss Standard had said the group has ambitious plans for Siti Cable too which is poised to emerge as the new media, commerce and entertainment vehicle in the next millinneum. If Chandra is able to pull off the deal involving Siti Cable to an investor(s), then it will go a long way in paying back Murdoch/Star TV $ 148.25 million in cash as part of a deal which was signed few months back, analysts said. Both Zee and Star TV had announced that the latter will be selling its 50 per cent stake each in three companies, Asia Today Ltd, Patco and Siti Cable, to Zee at a total consideration of $ 296.51 million. Half of this is to be paid by Chandra in cash and the rest in the form of prefrential shares of ZTL to various Murdoch companies/nominees. Sources said the high valuation of Siti Cable is due to the fact that there is a paradign shift from voice to data which is shifting the wealth creation from telephony to cable companies worldwide. In this regard, recently AT&T recently acquired two cable companies, TCI and Media One, for a price in the excess of $ 120 billion (rpt: BILLION). Commenting on these acquitions, analaysts had said that AT&T beleives that about 1.5 million digitall susbcribers of TCI and 5 million of Media One would give it an edge in the emrging data markets. Though Siti Cable does not have the susbcriber base of TCI or Media One to match at the moment, but its current operations in about 45 Indian cities gives it access to close to 4.5 million cable homes. That IT-related services, along with enetertainment, is a sunrise industry can be gauged from the fact that Chandra has given sweat equity to Zee managing director, V. Jindal, in a `new media' company, to be located in Bangalore, called E-connect Ltd and the Zee group will be spending Rs 400 crore over the next three years on this project.