UAE telecom giant Etisalat has offered to buy a 46 percent stake in Kuwait's leading mobile operator Zain in a deal estimated at $10.5 billion, the CNBC Arabiya satellite channel said on Wednesday. Quoting unnamed sources, the Dubai-based business channel said Etisalat has offered a price of 1.7 dinars ($5.97) per share. Zain share prices immediately jumped on the news, gaining 7.9 percent to close at 1.36 dinars ($4.77). The Kuwait Stock Exchange index also closed up 0.85 percent at 6,928 points. Later on Wednesday, Zain posted a statement on the KSE website saying its management had not received any offer as has been reported. Etisalat is thought to have been in talks with leading shareholders in Zain such as the Khorafi group and not with the management. In March this year, Zain sold its operations in 15 African nations to India's Bharti Airtel for $10.7 billion, netting a profit of more than $3 billion from the deal. Besides Kuwait, Zain operates in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sudan, Jordan and Iraq, Lebanon and Morocco. The Kuwaiti government holds a 24.6 percent stake in the firm, which currently has more than 30 million clients. Before striking the deal with Bharti, Zain held unsuccessful negotiations with an Indo-Malaysian consortium to sell 46 percent of the company for about $14 billion. Executives at both Abu Dhabi's Etisalat and Zain were not immediately available for comment. “If this is fact and not just rumour, the market will perform very well over the next month because it will be a huge deal,” said Essa Al-Hasawi, assistant manager at Zumorroda Investment Co in Kuwait. Zain offloaded its African assets earlier this year in a $9 billion deal with India's Bharti Airtel.
