Qatar Telecom
, the Arab world's second-biggest phone company by sales, is studying Maroc Telecom's financials as it considers buying Vivendi's 53 per cent stake in the carrier, its chief executive officer said.
Qatar Telecom is one of several companies interested in the stake and expects no difficulty financing a deal, the company's chief executive Nasser Marafih said in an interview at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
"The company has the capacity to finance it," Mr Marafih said. "We need to figure out what it's worth, not only in the short term but also in the longer term."
Qatar Telecom proceeding to the so-called due diligence phase signals Vivendi may be nearer to finding a buyer for the Moroccan stake, valued by the market at US$5.9 billion, than for the GVT Brazilian phone unit that has also been put up for sale. Paris-based Vivendi has also received interest for Maroc Telecom from UAE's
Etisalat
. Maroc Telecom's other investors include the Moroccan government.
South Korea's KT Corp is no longer a leading candidate for the asset, said two people familiar with the situation. France Telecom, Vivendi's rival in France, has no plans to acquire the unit, strategy chief Elie Girard said.
JPMorgan Chase & Co is advising Qatar Telecom on Maroc Telecom.
* Bloomberg News
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
