Shanduka/MTN Nigeria clarification and more insight

I made a mistake yesterday, apologies. In my MTN piece I said that Shanduka had bought the stake in MTN Nigeria from MTN International, that was not the case. In fact Shanduka bought the stake from a private equity crowd called ACA that were exiting the investment. The annoyance was not that Shanduka had bought it, but that MTN International had not. Sorry for that, clarification! Now the one part that we are struggling with in the office is the part in which Phuti Mahanyele (she is the CEO of Shanduka) says that this transaction was done at an arms length from MTN. Implying that Chairperson of MTN, Cyril Ramaphosa, did not take part in the negotiations. MTN in fact had a pre-emptive right to buy that stake, but did not. I wonder why? That is still an irritation for us. And I suppose that Ramaphosa's family interests, his family trust which owns a little more than 30 percent of Shanduka must have known that this deal was taking place. Surely. But I am guessing that it is very plausible that Mahanyele could have briefed Ramaphosa after the deal had actually happened. No need to speculate. This is a massive deal for Shanduka, the WSJ suggests that their (Shanduka) enterprise value is 1.58 billion Dollars. So 335 million Dollars is a big deal.


There are some clues around valuations were given away by Mahanyele, where she says in this interview, Shanduka denies confict of interest in buying MTN Nigeria stake: Phuti Mahanyele - CEO, Shanduka, with Hilton Tarrant of Moneyweb that "We haven't disclosed that figure just because we don't want to give rise to an indication of what the entry price was, given that the group is listed. So ja, we deliberately left out that number. But we would become the third-largest shareholder in the business." That last sentence is the clue, the third largest shareholder. But for the life of me I can't seem to find that list. All I know is that MTN own more than 78 percent. And I did in my scouting come across a valuation at the height of the market of MTN Nigeria of around than 10 billion Dollars. So, you might well find that this 335 million Dollars might be for a stake of around 3 percent.