KUWAIT: Kuwait Mobile Telecommunications Co. (Zain) said it signed a term sheet with Kingdom Holding Company and Batelco for the sale of its stake in Zain Saudi. "Zain signed yesterday the term sheet for the non-binding offer, with Kingdom-Batelco consortium...to buy Zain's 25 percent stake in Zain Saudi," the firm said in a statement on the Kuwaiti bourse website Thursday. The agreement includes all the terms that Zain had set for the buyers, the firm said. "All the terms and the conditions of the term sheet are the same to the ones that Zain set before. The signing of the non-binding term sheet is to clarify the details of the offer only," Zain added. Batelco said the next phase will involve getting the approval of the relevant parties in the deal. Batelco said it had received permission to go ahead with its $950 million non-binding joint bid for a 25 percent stake in Zain Saudi. Batelco Group Chief Executive Peter Kaliaropoulos announced that the Kingdom-Batelco Consortium non-binding offer received endorsement from the Zain Group board on March 14. Batelco has teamed up with Alwaleed's Kingdom Holding Company after a previous bid for the stake was rejected. Kaliaropoulos recently hit out at the suggestion that Batelco was struggling to raise cash for the bid. "I would like to express our complete surprise on such highly speculative, unfounded and erroneous comments," he said last month. "The Batelco Group, based on proposals received from financial institutions, is confident that it has the capacity to raise debt up to $1.2 billion." Batelco and KHC will now carry out a due diligence exercise of Zain Saudi before deciding whether or not to make a binding offer for the shareholding.
