Company News

Orascom Media

Orascom Telecom Media & Technology Holding SAE may consider buying telecommunication assets in countries such as Libya, Syria and Yemen if the post-Arab Spring governments in those nations seek investments, outgoing Chief Executive Officer Khalid Bichara said.

“We’re looking at some markets post Arab Spring government-owned assets,” Bichara said in an interview in London on Tuesday. “They’ll eventually have to find a way to manage them - either they’ll tender them out for sale or they’ll get companies to manage them. We’ll be ready for that whether through investing or through management contracts.”

Cairo-based Orascom Telecom Media, whose shareholders will meet this week to vote on a 1.05 Egyptian-pound dividend, is debt-free and would be able to fund investments with bank loans, said Bichara, who was in the UK. to mark the first day of trading in the company’s global deposit receipts on the London Stock Exchange. The company, controlled by Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, is looking to grow its cables business, and may sell assets of its Orascom Telecom Ventures unit, Bichara said.

Orascom Telecom Media approved its dividend after the company agreed to sell most of its stake in Egyptian Co. for Mobile Services, the operator known as Mobinil, to France Telecom SA. Orascom Telecom Media was spun off from Orascom Telecom Holding SAE earlier this year to facilitate a $6.5 billion merger between parent Wind Telecom SpA and Russia’s VimpelCom.

Tamweel

Tamweel may sell Islamic bonds priced at about 335 basis points to 345 basis points over the one-month dollar Libor, according to two investors familiar with the plan.

The company plans to raise $235 million from the planned sale of bonds, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

Bahrain bond

Bahrain plans to issue a benchmark-sized 10-year dollar bond this week, lead arrangers said, after testing investor appetite in roadshows that conclude on Tuesday. Initial price guidance for the issue, which appears to be a single-tranche deal, was at a spread of 462.5 basis points over midswaps. At current swap prices, that equates to a coupon of 6.375 percent; 10-year midswaps were quoted at 1.75 percent on Tuesday. Bahrain had initially looked to sell a $1-billion conventional bond at the beginning of 2011 but was forced to postpone plans due to political unrest in the country.

IPIC

Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Co., or IPIC, has formed a 50-50 joint venture with Oman Oil Co. to own and develop a refinery and petrochemical complex in Duqm, Oman. The joint venture is to build a refinery in the project’s first phase, IPIC and Oman Oil said in an emailed statement. The refinery, targeted for completion in 2017, is expected to have a capacity of 230,000 barrels per day. A second phase of construction is to encompass the petrochemical complex. Duqm Refinery and Petrochemical Industries, as the joint venture is called, would take advantage of Duqm’s “strategic location” along one of the world’s most important shipping routes, Nasser Bin Khamis Al Jasmi, Oman Oil’s chairman, said in the statement. Duqm is on Oman’s southeastern coast. IPIC is an investment vehicle owned by the Abu Dhabi government. Oman Oil is wholly owned by Oman’s government.

Qatar Telecom

Qatar Telecom QSC offered to buy the shares it doesn’t already own in National Mobile Telecommunications Co., according to a statement issued by Kuwait’s Capital Markets Authority. The shares of National Mobile Telecommunications, also known as Wataniya Telecom, will be suspended from trading until the regulator takes a decision on the request, according to the statement posted on the Kuwait stock exchange website. It didn’t provide financial details of the offer. Qatar Telecom, the nation’s biggest phone company, owns a 52.5 percent stake in Wataniya Telecom, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Wataniya Telecom shares, which closed trade at 2,200 fils on Monday, were suspended from trading on Tuesday. The stock has gained 13 per cent this year.

Aamal

Aamal Co., a Qatari diversified holding, has signed a joint venture agreement with South Korea’s C&C Lightway to market lighting products locally and in other Gulf states and to set up a factory in Qatar in the near future, Doha-based Al Arab daily reported on Tuesday. The factory will be involved in the assembly and manufacture of light-emitting diode, or LED, bulbs and other lighting products by using C&C Lightway’s technology and know-how, the paper reports. Aamal’s chairman Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani said according to the daily that the planned joint venture is part of his company’s strategy to supply products in strong demand particularly in the Gulf’s fast growing economies.

— Compiled from agencies