Bharti Telecom boosts Airtel stake to 40.33% in off-market deal

The main promoter of Bharti Airtel, Bharti Telecom Ltd (BTL), increased its ownership of the firm to 40.33 percent by purchasing an extra 1.2 percent from Indian Continent Investment Ltd (ICIL), another promoter entity, in an off-market deal.

Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL) announced in a late-night NSE filing, that it had off-marketly purchased about 1.2 percent of Bharti Airtel Limited's shares from Indian Continent Investment Limited (ICIL). 

ICIL now owns 3.31 percent of Airtel, down from approximately 4.51% prior to this deal. Bharti Telecom pointed out that ICIL is a member of Airtel's promoter group and works in tandem with BTL. 

The Mittal family owns 50.56 percent of BTL, the largest stakeholder in Airtel, while Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) owns 49.44 percent.

This rise in ownership comes after BTL recently raised over Rs 11,150 crore through a fresh non-convertible debenture (NCD) offering, for which Standard Chartered Bank and Barclays were reportedly designated as arrangers.

Additionally, recently Bharti Airtel also declared that it has signed a Membership Interest Purchase Agreement with Ericsson US Dhaulagiri to purchase approximately 5% of the Membership Interest in the API (Application Programming Interface) Joint Venture based in the US.

A new joint venture to consolidate and market network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) globally was announced by Ericsson and international telecom carriers, including Bharti Airtel. Through the partnership, a wider ecosystem of developer platforms would be able to access and implement standard APIs from various telecom service providers.