Etisalat arranges $8 billion loan for stakes in Maroc Telecom

The Dubai state owned and PTCL’s parent company,Etisalat has lined up $8 billion loan in order to finance its bid to acquire Vivendi’s stake in Maroc Telecom. The French media group Vivendi is selling its 53 percent shares in the Moroccan Telecom company in order to pay off its debts. The bidding of Maroc Telecom is expected to take place on April 22, 2013 and the bidding companies are required to arrange finances for the stake purchase ahead of making final offers to Vivendi.

The overall estimate of Vivendi’s stake has been valued at around $6 billion and it is expected that the winning company will be bidding for minority shares as well, having full control over the company. Etisalat is reported to have been working with BNP Paribas as financial adviser, which is putting together the $8 billion loan, split equally between a term loan and a bridge loan, which will be refinanced later through a bond sale.

Qtel of Qatar had announced on March 18 that they were negotiating with banks to get a loan approved to help them in bid for Vivendi’s Maroc Telecom stakes. ST Corp. of South Korea will also be a part of bidding.

1.7 million US documents published on WikiLeaks

The famous whistle blower website WikiLeaks has crossed the mark of 1.7 million United States diplomatic and intelligence reports on every country in the world. Most of the work behind arranging and publishing these sensitive documents was done by Julian Assange, at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he has taken refuge since last summer.

The Ecuadorian Government has given him political asylum as Assange was afraid of being sent to United States if he was extradited to Sweden to face sexual offence charges.

The data contained on the WikiLeaks site shows the “vast range and scope” of US diplomatic records from 1973 to 1976, including cables, intelligence reports and other correspondence and has been termed as Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD) by Assange. Most of the reports contained in the PlusD were written by Henry Kissinger.

Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks had undertaken a detailed analysis of the communications, and claimed the information eclipsed Cablegate, a set of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks from November 2010 onwards after being anonymously leaked.

The collection published today has not been leaked, but Mr. Assange said WikiLeaks had been working for the past year to analyze a vast data hoard from the US national archives before releasing it in a searchable form.