What? Orascom kissed and told yesterday, saying that MTN had offered 7.8 billion US Dollars for the Algerian unit Djezzy. Struggling to say that, just use our presidents initials or nickname. Not the lovepants one. Order! Turns out that the Algerian government could be the buyers of Djezzy, perhaps we knew this all along but did not want it to be so. But they are still talking to MTN about their other business units. I suspect the African ones, not the Asian ones, although it might be quite nice to be giving emperor Kim Jung-Il an Ayoba service. That is right folks, Orascom has an operation in North Korea. As ever we wait, it would be quite nice for MTN to get into Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Oh, and if you thought that the Reliance Telecommunication lines would be opened with MTN again, then this FT article rubbishes that: Etisalat in talks over $4bn stake in Reliance. Although I guess that just might be the spark to reignite the talks between the two. One wonders how government feel about "their" assets of national importance?