Bharti urged to raise MTN offer

India's top mobile company, Bharti Airtel, kept mum yesterday on a call by a key shareholder of South Africa's flagship MTN cellular group to improve its merger offer. MTN entered "exclusive talks" last week with Bharti to create what the two say would be an "emerging market telecom powerhouse" with more than 200 million subscribers and $20 billion (Dh73.4bn) annually in revenues. South Africa's Public Investment Corporation, or PIC, MTN Group's biggest single shareholder, voiced its conditional support on Tuesday for the proposed $23bn cash-and-share swap. But PIC, which holds 13.5 per cent of MTN, said there was scope for an improvement on the price offered by Bharti and wanted to know how much influence MTN would have over the merged entity. "We have no comment, this is a period of exclusivity [for negotiations]," a Bharti spokesman said. Discussions over a tie-up collapsed a year ago after MTN made a counter-offer that Bharti said would have made the Indian company a "subsidiary" of the South African firm. PIC's chief executive Brian Molefe was quoted by Indian media as saying the South African pension fund would support the deal because of "the strategic imperative" to increase MTN's diversification. But he added the support was conditional on the shape of the final deal and there was "room for improvement on the price". The two companies have said they will hold exclusive talks until July 31 for the cross-shareholding pact that would involve $10bn in cash and $13bn in stock. Other small MTN shareholders have also called for Bharti to sweeten its offer. But the Lebanon-based Mikati family, MTN's second-largest shareholder with just under 10 per cent, has swung its support behind the deal. Keep up with the latest business news from the region with the daily Emirates Business 24|7 newsletter. To subscribe to the newsletter, please click here .