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Technology Stocks : Vodafone-Airtouch (NYSE: VOD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrGreenJeans who wrote (2976)	10/4/2000 7:22:28 AM
From: MrGreenJeans	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3175

China Mobile sets funding for US$32.8 bln purchase (UPDATE: Updates throughout, adds further detail) By David Lawder and Karen Richardson HONG KONG, Oct 4 (Reuters) - China's biggest wireless carrier China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd revealed on Wednesday it will pay US$32.84 billion to acquire seven provincial networks from its mainland parent and has enlisted Britain's Vodafone Plc (quote from Yahoo! UK & Ireland: VOD.L) to help it fund the deal. In a briefing restricted to analysts, China Mobile said it will sell Vodafone US$2.5 billion in new shares and would place an additional US$4.1 billion in shares with institutional investors, excluding an overallotment option of US$1 billion. The lion's share of the acquisition price will be satisfied by the issue of US$22.67 billion worth of new shares to its parent, China Mobile Communications Corp. The Hong Kong-listed cellular group also will take on US$1.2 billion in debt, bringing the deal's total value to US$34.04 billion. The remainder of the financing will come from a US$600 million convertible note issue which has a US$90 million overallotment option, a US$1.5 billion bank facility denominated in yuan and some US$500 million from China Mobile's existing internal cash resources. The private equity placement portion could reach up to US$7.6 billion after overallotments, making it Asia's largest equity financing outside Japan, topping the US$5.65 billion initial public offering of rival China Unicom in June. Merrill Lynch, China International Capital Corp and Goldman Sachs are the joint global coordinators of the deal. According to China Mobile Chairman Wang Xiaochu, the network acquisitions, would increase the company's subscriber base by 63 percent, making it the world's second largest mobile carrier after Vodafone, analysts attending the briefing said. As of September 20, China Mobile had 23.9 million subscribers. The deal includes the sale of networks in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Liaoning, Hebei, Shandong and Guangxi. In October 1999, China Mobile paid US$6.4 billion to acquire networks in Fujian, Henan and Hainan provinces. Wang said that China Mobile claimed 55.9 percent of all of China's mobile users and its networks would now cover 48 percent of China's 1.2 billion population. The agreement with Vodafone, said to be the only strategic investor in the planned share placement, also sets out terms for cooperation between the two groups, allowing them to exchange expertise on management, technology, subscriber relationships, marketing and other operations. A statement released by Vodafone said the two companies will ``explore suitable opportunities for joint ventures and other equity-based strategic alliances,'' subject to separate negotiations and regulatory approvals.