{"id":14448,"date":"2012-06-04T14:39:43","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T12:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=14448"},"modified":"2012-06-05T11:22:27","modified_gmt":"2012-06-05T09:22:27","slug":"vodacom-drc-share-auction-put-on-hold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/14448\/vodacom-drc-share-auction-put-on-hold\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom DRC share auction put on hold"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Democratic Republic of Congo Supreme Court has suspended a planned mandatory auction of shares in the local unit of South African mobile phone provider Vodacom Group<\/a>, the parent company said on Monday.<\/p>\n

The auction was planned for 3 June but was suspended pending the outcome of \u201ccertain legal proceedings\u201d, the group said in a statement, without giving further details.<\/p>\n

Vodacom, a unit of Britain\u2019s Vodafone Plc<\/a>, said on 21 May it would fight a court ruling which said that it must pay $21m in fees to local consultant Namemco Energy or face the sale of all its shares in the Congolese unit.<\/p>\n

The company was already locked in a long-standing battle over fees with its partner in the DRC, Congolese Wireless Network.<\/p>\n

It had been looking at options to exit the business, but that process has been halted by the suit from Namemco.<\/p>\n

The value of the unit is also disputed. Congolese Wireless Network chairman Alieu Conteh told Reuters in 2010 that Vodacom Congo was worth more than $1.5bn, a figure Vodacom quickly described as \u201cludicrous\u201d.<\/p>\n

Vodacom\u2019s major African operations are in South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, where it is fighting to defend market share from larger competitors such as MTN Group<\/a> and India\u2019s Bharti Airtel<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Democratic Republic of Congo Supreme Court has suspended a planned mandatory auction of shares in the local unit of South African mobile phone provider Vodacom Group, the parent company said on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":13118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[25,3022,2872,2574,737],"class_list":["post-14448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-active","tag-congolese-wireless-network","tag-vodacom-congo","tag-vodacom-group","tag-vodafone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14448"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14450,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14448\/revisions\/14450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}