[الخبر لم يتم تأكيده من طرفي الصفقة ولكن الخبر نقلا عن التلفزيون الكيني:
As the mist clears over exactly who the new owner of Zain Kenya is, you could be forgiven for having a sense of déjà vu.
So all the rumours and speculative talk have come to an end; Vivendi is now the proud owner of Zain Africa.
Europe’s largest entertainment group Vivendi, has reportedly won the race for Zain Africa with a reported bid of $12 billion (about Sh960 billion), signaling an ironic return for the French firm that was forced to sell its stake in its Kenyan operation after the second tech bubble burst in 2003.
At the time strapped for cash and with its global operations limping, Vivendi’s 60 per cent share in Zain Kenya (then Kencell) was sold in what became one of the biggest corporate coups in Kenya’s history.
Now Vivendi is back, hoping to be second time lucky in turning around the fortunes of the company it founded in 2000, which is now part of a pan-African conglomerate operating in 16 countries.
Vivendi returns as a more healthy operation keen to capture a share of the growing African telecoms market which it was forced to abandon a few years ago.
Although officials at both companies and their transaction handlers declined to confirm the deal, sources familiar with the transaction said it had been recently completed, clearing the way for a new owner for the local operation.
In September 2000, Kencell (now Zain) begun operations, becoming the first private Kenyan company to offer GSM mobile services alongside the government-owned Safaricom, the dominant force in the market.
Five months earlier, the company, which was then a 60:40 initiative between French telecommunications firm Vivendi and local businessman Naushad Merali’s investment powerhouse Sameer Group, had spent Sh4 billion on securing the country’s second mobile operator licence which was to guide Kencell’s operations for the next five years.
Specifically Kencell was expected to create 5,000 new jobs and invest a projected Sh30 billion over the period.
At the time, analysts were not overly enthusiastic about the growth of the market, despite several indicators that the potential had hardly been scratched and predicted modest growth for both Kencell and its competitor Safaricom.
In one of its initial understatements Kencell announced at launch that out of the nearly 30 million Kenyans, it anticipated the market potential for mobile penetration to stand at between two–three million or just 10 per cent of the population.
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