edotco scraps RM4bil plan to acquire Pakistan towers

However, as part of the conditions, edotco BD cannot retain a mobile network operator as its shareholder. It said with the transfer, edotco BD moves one step closer to fulfilling the conditions for tower licence eligibility

KUALA LUMPUR: edotco Group Sdn Bhd's plans to acquire 13,000 towers from Pakistan Mobile Communications Ltd have been scuppered as certain regulatory approvals were not received.

edotco, the infrastructure business unit of Axiata Group Bhd, said in a statement it had failed to obtain regulatory approval for the change of control of the towers.

"The transaction was subject to a number of conditions and terminated due to the non-fulfilment of the conditions precedent to the SPA within the stipulated timeframe, in particular regulatory approval for the resulting change of control contemplated under the SPA," it said.

In August 2017, it was announced that edotco had partnered Dawood Hercules Corp Ltd to acquire the towers via edotco Pakistan unit Tanzanite Tower Pte Ltd for about RM4bil.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Dawood Hercules would have acquired a 45% equity stake in edotco Pakistan while the remainder would belong to edotco.

Post-acquisition, edotco would have become the eighth largest independent tower company in the world from its current 11th position.