Veon close to sale of Pakistan tower assets to TPL-TASC Group: report

Veon Limited, a Dutch-domiciled multinational telecommunication services company, is close to selling its tower assets in Pakistan to a consortium comprising Pakistan’s TPL Corp. and UAE-based TASC Towers Holding Limited, reported Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter.

The acquisition of towers could become Pakistan’s largest deal in more than a decade, added the report.

Discussions are at an advanced stage and the transaction, which involves Veon’s 10,000 to 12,000 towers in Pakistan, could be announced in the coming weeks. The deal could fetch more than $600 million, added Bloomberg.

One of the people, quoted in the report, said the TPL-TASC group has emerged as the most probable buyer after beating out rival bidders including other telecom companies.

Last month, TPL REIT Management Company Ltd (RMC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of TPL Properties Limited, along with TASC Towers submitted a firm bid for the acquisition of Telecom Tower Infrastructure Company, which owns and manages around 10,500 operating towers in Pakistan through an infrastructure real estate investment trust (REIT).

Back in September, TPL RMC entered into a strategic partnership with TASC Towers for the acquisition of a telecom tower infrastructure company.

In a separate development, Veon Group CEO Kaan Terzioglu, during his two-day visit to Pakistan, said that the investment of Jazz, a subsidiary of Veon, has crossed $10.3 billion in Pakistan. Terzioglu reiterated the Group’s full support towards the government’s Digital Pakistan vision.

During the meetings with various ICT industry stakeholders, the VEON delegation also highlighted that a healthy and stable telecom sector, the foundation of a country’s digital ecosystem, fuels virtually all sectors of the economy and is a prerequisite for consistent improvement in service quality for users.

However, the telecom industry’s financial health has recently been impacted due to an unprecedented rise in the cost of operations: primarily fuel, electricity, interest rates, constantly increasing USD pegged spectrum installments, and most recently severe damages caused to critical digital infrastructure by floods to the extent that now it threatens the very survival of telecom sector.