Aditya Birla Group demands savings from the coupling between group appendage Idea Cellular Ltd and Vodafone Group Plc’s India correlative to be significantly more than the $10 billion it foretold in March last year, group chief financial officer Sushil Agarwal said in an interview.
He said:
Given the large synergies that we had announced, we had indicated that there would be $10 billion savings which will come and since the merger is likely to consummated ahead of what we had announced… as of now it looks like we will be ahead of the original timeline… so that $10 billion will become a larger number. That’s a large sum for any company.
The benefits gathering out of the Idea-Vodafone merger will progress on account of savings made by both Idea Cellular and Vodafone India Ltd because of synergies in the capital and be manipulating outgo as the group now exacts the amalgamation to be completed much before the original deadline of September 2018.
Mint on 15 January reported:
Idea-Vodafone will start functioning as a single entity from April.
The group also expects pricing pressure to moderate soon. India’s second- and third-largest mobile-phone service providers, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular, are in the process of a merger, and the merged outfit is expected to have a new name and brand identity.
This may come into effect a year after the transaction closes.
-reports Economic Times.
UK-based Vodafone and Idea, owned by Indian industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla, are working toward a new market positioning that will attract customers and retain the brand-recall value associated with both parent companies.
-the daily added.
The companies are in the final leg of getting regulatory approvals for the merger and expect the deal to close in the first half of this year.
The merger will create India’s largest mobile-phone operator by subscribers and market revenue share. This is expected to put them in a better position to take on the competition unleashed by Reliance Jio Infocomm, owned by India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, and the current leading telecom service provider Bharti Airtel.
