India’s largest telco Bharti Airtel yesterday said it has tied up $8.3 billion from a clutch of foreign banks and State Bank of India (SBI) to fund the acquisition of Zain telecom’s African assets, for which both the companies are in exclusive talks till March 25.
“Bharti Airtel is pleased to announce that the entire financing requirement of $8.3 billion for the proposed acquisition of Zain’s African unit (Zain Africa BV) has been successfully tied up,” the company said in a statement. “Financing was oversubscribed, with major international banks committing to underwrite the total amount,” the statement added.
If Airtel is acquiring Zain Africa’s assets, then we can expect that Zain Nigeria will be undergoing another name change sooon. Sounds familiar; right?
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March 29th, 2010 at 5:25 pm Browsing with
The frequent name changes must be doing a lot of havoc to the company.
There is no brand loyalty when there is no brand consistency!
Even a 3-year old kid recognises am MTN logo when she sees it! Now, that is effective brand management.
I can only imagine the deleterious effect of continual rebranding on this company as regards their bottomline (both in terms of brand disloyalty and the cost of creating new identities in the minds of the customers). Billboards, letterheads, advert jingles, logos – will once again have to change…
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March 29th, 2010 at 5:27 pm Browsing with
Here we go again…
Econet Wireless…. Econet Nigeria… Vodacom… Celtel… Zain… then comes Airtel…
Am sure I’ve missed out one or two names.
Happy rebranding….
But has any of these brought us a reliable network?
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March 29th, 2010 at 10:40 pm Browsing with
Airtel acquisition of Zain’s Africa operations doesnt necessarily require a name change.
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March 30th, 2010 at 12:53 pm Browsing with
Changing of name or not in as much as the network is up and running…….. I feel its OK !!!
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March 30th, 2010 at 8:55 pm Browsing with
unfortunately for Zain, network reliability is not a strong point of theirs, now comes re-branding….again? Isn’t this too much for their poor subscribers?
I think this should be a case study for foremost business schools in the world. How many times can a company re-brand and still remain relevant and taken be seriously?
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March 31st, 2010 at 7:20 am Browsing with
i wonder why the kuwaitis think they can not run a profitable telecom coy in nigeria? well indians are shrewd businessmen. hope they don’t put it up for sale in the nearest future.
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August 16th, 2010 at 12:17 pm Browsing with
Changing of name, I feel its OK
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