SingTel Purchases more of Bharti Airtel
The additional shares represent 0.1 percentage point stake of Bharti Airtel, which is jointly promoted by Sunil Mittal's group of companies and Singtel.
SingTel, bought 28.30 lakh shares of Bharti Airtel through its subsidiary Viridian, from the open market. The cost of this purchase was Rs93.4 crore (about 26 million Singapore dollars), SingTel stated in a stock filing.
At the end of December 2010, SingTel had 15.72% od shares in Bharti Airtel directly through its wholly-owned subsidiaries -- Pastel (15.57%) and Viridian (0.15%) -- while the rest was held indirectly by the parent company.
“The purchase consideration was determined by the prevailing market price of Airtel on the relevant stock exchange," it said.
The promoters holding in Bharti Airtel stands at 68.2%, it includes 45.48% by Mittal group firm Bharti Telecom (31 December, 2010).
Among other shareholders, a little over 5% is held by LIC.
In January of 2011, Viridian had purchased 40.75 lakh shares of Bharti Airtel via open market for Rs136 crore taking its effective shareholding in Airtel to 32.15%.
Telecom giant Bharti Airtel, in its third quarter earnings, had posted a 40.62% dip in net income to Rs1,303.3 crore. This was primarily on account of increase in spectrum charges and one-time costs related to its brand relaunch in Africa.
OneIndia Money