SAN FRANCISCO, December 04, (THEWILL) – A newly founded telecommunications consortium, NATCOM, Wednesday emerged the preferred bidder for the assets and liabilities of the moribund Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) and its mobile arm, the Mobile Telecommunications (M-Tel), with a successful bid of $252.251 million under a guided liquidation process for both firms, after previous unsuccessful efforts to sell the firms.
Mr. Tunde Ayeni, the chairman of Skye Bank Plc; Sahara Energy, Captain Hosa Okunbor and other are shareholders of NATCOM.
During the financial bid process managed by the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), the consortium had initially offered to acquire NITEL and M-Tel for $221 million, but the offer was rejected by the Vice-Chairman of the Technical Committee of the National Council on Privatisation (NCP), Alhaji Haruna Sambo, who represented the chairman, Mr. Peterside Atedo, for falling below the reserve price.
After a fifteen minutes breakout session to enable the bidders review their bid, NATCOM returned with a $252.251 million bid that was accepted.
Announcing NATCOM’s emergence as the preferred bidder, Sambo said: “I am happy to announce that the revised bid has met the reserve price.”
Two bidders – NATCOM and NETTAG – had been prequalified by the BPE to participate in the liquidation process, but the latter was disqualified for failing to include a $10 million bid bond as stipulated in the Request for Proposals (RFP) prepared by the privatisation agency.
