{"id":48638,"date":"2013-10-30T15:04:57","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T13:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=48638"},"modified":"2013-10-30T15:23:41","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T13:23:41","slug":"vodafone-not-making-any-moves-on-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/48638\/vodafone-not-making-any-moves-on-vodacom\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodafone not making any moves on Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodafone Group<\/a> says it has no current aspirations to increase its share in South African operator, Vodacom<\/a>, of which it is already a\u00a0majority shareholder.<\/p>\n

The UK based group confirmed that it is seeking\u00a0approval from the authorities in India, to increase its stake in the Vodafone India unit for 101.41 billion rupees ($1.65 billion), a number put forward by Reuters.<\/p>\n

It follows a move in August by the authorities in India to enable foreign companies to take full ownership of local carriers. Previously,\u00a0foreign companies were limited to direct stakes of no more than 74% in local operators.<\/p>\n

Vodafone, which entered India in 2007 through an acquisition of Hutchison Whampoa\u2019s local cellular assets in an $11 billion deal, directly and indirectly owns a combined 84.5% of Vodafone India.<\/p>\n

Vodafone directly owns 64.38% of the India unit and is believed to be after full control.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Vodafone has a 65% stake in Vodacom, but a question by BusinessTech\u00a0on any\u00a0intentions it may have on the SA firm drew the following response from\u00a0Ben Padovan<\/a>, head of group media relations at\u00a0Vodafone: “I can confirm that we have sought approval in India to increase our stake.”<\/p>\n

“There is no read across into other markets, and this has happened in India now because the sector caps governing foreign investment in telecoms companies has just been lifted from 74% to 100% in India.”<\/p>\n

Vodafone recently agreed a\u00a0$130 billion payout with\u00a0Verizon Communications<\/a> after the latter firm agreed to buy Vodafone Group out of its US wireless business, signing history\u2019s third largest corporate deal.<\/p>\n

In April 2011, Vodacom spent R200 million in a\u00a0re-brand\u00a0to align itself more closely to Vodafone, stopping short at a name change.<\/p>\n

More on Vodafone and Vodacom<\/h3>\n

Vodafone, Verizon green-light $130 billion deal<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodafone: how do we spend $130 billion?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodafone to buy Indian unit for $1.65 billion<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom\u2019s role within Vodafone Group<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom\u2019s problem-parent, Vodafone<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UK based Vodafone Group says it has no current aspirations to increase its share in South African operator, Vodacom<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":38329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,6933,6553,27,737],"class_list":["post-48638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-hutchison-whampoa","tag-verizon-communications","tag-vodacom","tag-vodafone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48638","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48638"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48648,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48638\/revisions\/48648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}