{"id":3519,"date":"2012-01-19T12:57:53","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T12:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=3519"},"modified":"2012-11-14T15:46:07","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T13:46:07","slug":"no-talks-with-bharti-airtel-says-knott-craig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/3519\/no-talks-with-bharti-airtel-says-knott-craig\/","title":{"rendered":"No talks with Bharti-Airtel, says Knott-Craig"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Cell C<\/a> CEO Alan Knott-Craig<\/a> says that he is not in discussions with Bharti-Airtel<\/a> to get additional funding for Cell C.<\/p>\n

Cell C announced today (19 January 2012) that it has appointed former Vodacom<\/a> CEO Alan Knott-Craig as the new Chief Executive Officer of Cell C.<\/p>\n

Speculation about Knott-Craig joining Cell C as CEO started late last year (2011) – speculation which also suggested that Knott-Craig was in discussions with a potential international partner for Cell C.<\/p>\n

Industry rumours pointed to a potential investment from the Indian business conglomerate, Bharti-Airtel, which is looking to get a cellular footprint in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Knott-Craig has however debunked these rumours, saying that, while he contacted Bharti previously, he is not in discussions with them regarding an investment in Cell C.<\/p>\n

The new Cell C CEO has also dismissed speculation that he wanted a guarantee from the Cell C board that he would be given adequate funding to execute his plans before accepting the position.<\/p>\n

Spiwe Chireka<\/a>, program manager at the IDC, said that Bharti-Airtel\u2019s interest in entering the South African market would likely come in the form of a merger and acquisition (M&A) \u2013 with Cell C a suitable target.<\/p>\n

A deal may therefore still be attractive, especially with Knott-Craig at the helm of Cell C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig says that he is not in discussions with Bharti-Airtel to get additional funding for Cell C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[43,443,42,26,625],"class_list":["post-3519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-bharti","tag-cell-c","tag-headline","tag-idc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3519"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26514,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions\/26514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}