Brookfield said in talks to buy Indian cell towers

KKR ALSO BIDDING

GEORGE SMITH ALEXANDER AND SCOTT DEVEAU on Thursday, after earlier jumping as much as 5.2 per cent.

No final agreements have been reached, and there’s no certainty the discussions will result in a transaction, according to the people. Bharti Infratel shares had fallen 12 per cent from the start of the year through Wednesday, giving the company a market value of about US$10.1 billion.

A sale would help parent company Bharti Airtel Ltd. pay down net debt that totalled 814.8 billion rupees at the end of September. Bharti Airtel said last month it formed a panel to evaluate options for monetizing its 72-per-cent stake in the tower company. Bharti Airtel hasn’t made a final decision on how large a shareholding it’s willing to sell in the business, one of the people said.

“The asset is a very large one in the telecom space — there are very few such assets with such scale on the block,” Vivekanand Subbaraman, an analyst at Ambit Capital Pvt in Mumbai, said by phone Thursday. “For companies like Brookfield, the question will be on the magnitude of stake, whether there will be a control premium.”

Carlyle Group LP was also considering a bid for a stake in Bharti Infratel, another person said. Representatives for Blackstone, Brookfield, Carlyle, CPPIB and KKR declined to comment.

A takeover of Bharti Infratel would be Brookfield’s biggest investment in India. The Toronto-based firm agreed in October to buy Reliance Communications Ltd.’s cell tower business for an upfront payment of 110 billion rupees, in what would be the largest deal by a privateequity fund in the country.