Kurdish operator Korek Telecom is in talks to buy the Iraqi assets of Egypt's Orascom Telecom Holding, Korek's deputy chief executive officer said on Sunday. Korek paid $1.25 billion for one of three Iraqi mobile licences sold earlier this month at an auction in Jordan. "We are in negotiations with Orascom," Hameed Akrawi told Reuters in a telephone interview from Iraq.
"We are interested in buying the assets and the customer base, but this will depend on the price," he said. Credit Suisse said in a research note last week Orascom's Iraqna network could be worth as much as $1 billion.
Orascom set up Iraqna under licences sold in 2003 to it, Kuwait's Mobile Telecommunications Co(MTC) and Asiacell, which was an affiliate of Kuwait's National Mobile Telecommunications Co.
Orascom dropped out of the auction at the eleventh hour and said on August 19 it could sell its Iraqi operations. Kuwait's MTC and Asiacell, now an affiliate of Qatar Telecommunications Co, won the other licences, leaving Korek as the only winner without a national network.
Korek, which runs a network in Iraq's Kurdish northern region, is taking over Orascom's assets until the end of the year, Akrawi said. Its rivals would be allowed to bid for Iraqna if a sale could not be agreed by then. Asiacell will consider bidding for Iraqna, a shareholder of the company said last week.
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