Voda slips 2

What is it with Voda stories that gets everyone tongue-tied, so to speak? Control of a big overseas company has not alluded Arun Sarin — although it has eluded him. J Warner tells us he is suitably shamed....

Happy Christmas to you all...

Voda's Indian analysts

Voda has confirmed its interest in Hutchison Essar.
Why are analysts always "worried" that buyers will "overpay" for these deals? Oh no even bigger bonuses for us next year! What's to worry about - and if they can't make that connection, why are they paid so much in the first place?????

Fox in the City

We like City AM. It's one of the few newspapers left that understands how to write a front page story.
But it gets things wrong too and there's a delicious literal in today's top story that Vodafone is eying up Hutchison Essar in India. City AM says Voda's Arun Sarin is expected to meet "Canning Fox", md of Hutchison ... "on Friday to discuss the deal."
Kin-ning Fok may be a wily one, but he hasn't adopted the title yet...
Tee hee. Still, not as silly as some stories about Hutch - this one seems to be 100% typos.
Goldman Sachs analysts (who for some reason prefer the FT for this story) think a “package deal incorporating any of Hutchison’s European assets is interesting but does not look to us to be a particularly practical proposition." Voda can only acquire 74% of Essar under foreign ownership rules, and GS analysts reckon Voda has enough loose change to match the current market value of that stake - about $10.8 billion.
Selling its 10% stake in Airtel - market value about $2.5 bil - would make it even easier.

eco telco

Today is eco- day in telecoms. But that means different things: socio-economic growth according to a rather bizarre "Eco Growth" promo article sent to us from PR consultants acting for Roshan in Afghanistan (a company we like btw - just see WCA).
AsiaSat has a slightly more coherent case.
If these seem random, watch out for the bankers - they are increasingly making the telcology connection between energy, environment and telecoms.

spectra - the lost world

credit to ofcom for keeping up the effort to get new spectrum out there. you might be forgiven for thinking that issue had gone away or at least is nothing to worry about for the moment, but worldwide 4G airwave looks like another mess waiting to happen

Russo-Scandi mobile giant

Some curious dealmaking in global mobile. Wherever did they get that idea?