From Forbes
Africa’s richest woman, Isabel dos Santos, plans to increase her stake in Unitel, Angola’s largest mobile phone company.
According to a report by Portuguese newspaper, Publico, dos Santos (who already owns 25% of Unitel) and the other Angolan shareholders of the firm, which include Angola’s national oil company Sonangol, recently sent a letter to Portugal Telecom informing them that they plan to exercise their right to buy the Portuguese company’s shares in the Angolan mobile telecom giant. Portugal Telecom owns 25% of the Angolan mobile network, Unitel, held via a holding company called PT Internacional.
In October last year, Oi SA, Brazil’s biggest phone company, agreed to merge with Portugal Telecom to create a behemoth trans-Atlantic carrier, but in the letter dos Santos and other Angolan shareholders sent to Portugal Telecom, they claim that PT Internacional violated a shareholders’ agreement in the process of signing a merger agreement with Oi, and argued that they have a right of first refusal to acquire PT’s stake in the event of a change in ownership, and that the company’s merger with Brazil’s Oi triggers that clause. Portuguese bank BPI recently valued PT’s stake in Unitel at 930 million Euros ($1.3 billion).
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