CAIRO: Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Orascom Telecom, said his holding company Weather Investments was talking to telecoms group Vimpelcom about a merger and was open to talks with others, a newspaper reported. This was the first time Sawiris has confirmed the talks in published remarks after banking sources earlier told Reuters he was discussing a deal potentially worth $6.5 billion without debt. "We are not only talking to them, we are talking to anybody," Sawiris told Canada's The Globe and Mail in reference to merger discussions with Vimpelcom. Orascom's spokeswoman was not immediately available to comment on the report. Sawiris, whose telecoms assets include markets stretching from North Korea to Europe to Canada, has for years predicted a consolidation of the global telecoms industry and said he aimed to take advantage of it. The deal with Vimpelcom could give Sawiris and his partners around 20-23 percent of voting shares in the combined firm. An earlier attempt by Sawiris to sell assets to South Africa's MTN broke down after the Algerian government refused to let Orascom offload its unit Djezzy there. Djezzy, Orascom's main revenue earner, was the deal's crown jewel, and brokers and bankers worry intervention from the Algerian government could overshadow another deal attempt. "We have two things on our agenda right now — solving the Algerian issue and, second, finding a good partner for the group," Sawiris said in the news item posted on The Globe and Mail's website late on Monday. An Algerian newspaper reported on Tuesday that a commission chosen by Algeria will start evaluating next month how much Algiers should pay to acquire the local unit of Egyptian operator Orascom Telecom.
