Real Identity of new owners of 9Mobile, formerly Etisalat Nigeria

Recent reports indicated that Teleology Holdings Limited may have been finally selected as the preferred bidder for 9Mobile, formerly Etisalat Nigeria, the country’s fourth-largest mobile network.

This development may have brought to an end the acquisition process supervised by Barclays Africa, the transaction advisors.Promoted by Adrian Wood, the pioneer chief executive officer of MTN Nigeria, Teleology emerged as the new owner of 9mobile ahead of Smile, which had been the only other bidder in the final round of the takeover bid.

Though over 10 bidders had indicated interest in acquiring the mobile network, only five were shortlisted before the number was further reduced to three.While Globacom and Helios failed to back their technical bids with concrete financial bids, Airtel later pulled out of the process, leaving just Teleology and Smile Communications.

Teleology
Teleology, a private equity firm with an investment portfolio of $11 billion, offered more than $500 million to acquire the mobile network while Smile offered about $300 million.

According to industry sources, the company was purposely set up by some influential investors to revive the embattled telecom.Teleology is run by the pioneer Mr Adrian Wood, chief executive officer (CEO) of MTN Nigeria,.

Adrian Wood
Wood is an economist. He was trained at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. He is also the CEO of Brymedia West Africa Limited.After quitting MTN, Wood, an Australian-born launched an unsuccessful bid for Nigeria’s pioneer national operator, Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL).