Maxis may buy 26% of Aircel for $280 mn

Maxis Communications Berhad may pay $280 million (Rs 1,265.32 crore) for a 26 per cent stake in the C Sivasankaran-controlled Aircel Ltd.

The deal is expected to be signed on December 30. Aircel owns the Tamil Nadu and Chennai GSM circles and has a combined mobile telephone subscriber base of over 2.16 million.

At an enterprise value of $1.07 billion (Rs 4835.3 crore), the Malaysian company will be paying about $496 (around Rs 22,414) per subscriber for the deal.

Sivasankaran refused to comment on the deal. This is the fourth time he has struck a deal to sell Aircel. His earlier moves were stalled because the department of telecommunications (DoT) refused to issue the necessary clearances. Apart from Maxis, Sivasankaran was also in talks with Telekom Malaysia for selling a stake in his company.

In June last year, Sivasankaran had struck a deal with Hutchison Essar to sell the entire equity of the company for $362 million (Rs 1,635.9 crore). With a subscriber base of 850,000 at that time, Hutch was willing to pay around Rs 18,000 per subscriber. But the deal fell through because the DoT did not clear the acquisition.

In February this year, Sivasankaran signed an agreement with AFK Sistema of Russia to sell a 49 per cent stake for $450 million (Rs 2,033.5 crore).

This deal expired in March. However, the company was offering $546 per (Rs 24,674) subscriber "� higher than the Maxis offer.

In June 2005, a group of US investors lead by Pequot Ventures had offered to buy 30 per cent in Aircel for $350 million (Rs 1,581.6 crore). The talks fell though.

Sivasankaran is getting a much lower valuation than the $1,000 (Rs 45,190) per subscriber that Vodafone paid for a 10 per cent stake in Bharti Televentures and the $570 (Rs 25,758) a subscriber paid by Essar for buying out BPL Telecom.

Maxis Communications Berhad, which started commercial operations in 1995, is the leading telecommunications service provider in Malaysia.

The fifth largest public company in Malaysia, it provides a wide range of mobile, fixed and international network services. It has also begun 3-G services in the country.