Temasek to buy 5% in Bharti Airtel

Temasek Holdings, the Singapore government's investment arm, is acquiring 4.99% stake in Bharti Airtel, India's largest cellular telephony operator.

Singapore Telecom is already a large shareholder in the company.

"Bharti Enterprises continues to maintain a controlling interest of over
45% in Bharti Airtel through its subsidiary Bharti Telecom," said a statement issued by Bharti.

One of Bharti's group companies has decided to grant an option to acquire an indirect stake in Bharti Airtel to a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek. The option arrangement envisages acquisition of shares which, on exercise, will result in a 4.99% stake in Bharti Airtel.

(Source: Business Standard )

Bharti in global telecom top 10 list.

Bharti joins the top 10 gloabl list of telecom operators with a subscriber base of over 40m in India. It is expected to touch 130 million by 2010 as growth remain unabated in the fastest growing telecom market.

Others in top 10: China (China Mobile, China Unicom) USA(Cingular, Verizon, Sprint) Japan (NTT DoCoMo)