Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC has announced that the fund and a group of investors have acquired an Indian telecom tower firm for $3.4 billion, reports said.
The group of buyers includes Canada-based Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, which is aiming for a stake of 135,000 communication towers of Reliance Industries' unit Jio Infocomm, GIC disclosed. The agreement was sealed in December 2019 and awaits regulatory approval.
GIC chief information officer for infrastructure Ang Eng Seng said Tuesday that the new asset procurement provides a sound long-term value considering India's consistent growth outlook for communications demand. The new set of telecoms towers will help improve the speed of the region's fourth-generation infrastructure, Seng said.
GIC and Brookfield bought the asset from Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings, a wholly owned subsidiary of Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani, who owns and controls Reliance Industries.
In a media release Monday, Brookfield IPL said it will pour out $600 million in the $3.4 billion purchase price. It is the core infrastructure unit of Toronto-listed Brookfield Asset Management. According to Sam Pollock, Brookfield Infrastructure's chief executive officer, they are happy to have finalized the deal, which was one of the group's main goals this year.
The contract also marks the Singaporean and Canadian groups' entry into the vast telecom market of India, which has been cluttered by the unveiling of Jio Infocomm in the past years, and whose marked-down packages have attracted the masses and made it India's largest telecom operator in terms of subscription.
Brookfield Infrastructure is now "competitively" in position to gain from the country's lucrative data market, Pollock said. For Anuj Ranjan, Brookfield's managing partner and director of operations in India and the Middle East, Reliance had proved itself as a premier technology empire in India.
Meanwhile, additional communications infrastructure are on the drawing board. Brookfield said it expects to increase the total number of assets to 175,000 in the "near term." GIC concurred this will set the stage for a solid telecommunications business in India.
