Mega Merger

Two giants come together to form India’s largest telecom player.

- Sunil Damania

It took exactly 49 days for idea and Vodafone to stitch together a merger deal after it was officially announced by Vittorio Colao, CEO, Vodafone group, on 30 January 2017 in London. The basic precondition spelt out then by idea was that the merger would happen only if “The rights are split equally” between the two promoters – the Aditya Birla group and Vodafone. When the deal was announced on 20 march 2017, the point stressed strongly was that at the end of four years, both Vodafone and idea would have an equal stake in the merged entity. Vodafone even went out of the way to assure the Birlas that any excess stake held by Vodafone at that point would be sold within five years from the expiry of that four-year period. During the first leg of the deal, Vodafone will have a 45.1 percent stake in the entity, while the Aditya Birla group will hold 26 percent. The latter reserved the right to buy a 9.5 percent stake from Vodafone within the next four years, at a fixed price of ₹130 per share increasing its stake to 35.5 percent, while simultaneously bringing down Vodafone’s stake to 35.6 percent, thereby creating an equated holding structure in idea.

There is little clarity at the moment on issues like ‘what the new name of idea cellular would be’ and ‘the names of the CEO and coo of the combined entity’. What has been agreed upon, is that the chairman of the company would be Kumarmangalam Birla, while the cfo would be appointed by Vodafone. The press release, as well as the analysts’ presentations, by Vodafone and idea stated that the CEO and the coo would be the “Best persons for the job”, without elaborating what roles Sunil Sood, current CEO, Vodafone India, and Himanshu Kapania, CEO, idea, would hold.