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Telecommunications giant MTN has walked away from its bid to buy out smaller rival Telkom.
In a Sens announcement on Wednesday, Telkom, withdrawing its cautionary, said that MTN terminated discussions October 18 as Telkom was not in a position to provide MTN with assurances around exclusivity.
“Discussions were at an early stage and had not progressed to due diligence nor had a binding offer been received by the Telkom board of directors,” the company said in the statement.
In July, MTN and Telkom entered into discussions surrounding MTN’s acquisition of the entire issued share capital of Telkom in return for shares or a combination of cash and shares in MTN.
However, in September, data-only mobile operator rain tabled a nonbinding proposal outlining the potential acquisition of rain by Telkom for newly issued shares in Telkom.
At the time, Telkom issued a shareholder update noting that it was evaluating the proposal and was not yet in a position to express a view thereon.
This followed reports that rain had proposed a merger with the partially-State-owned group, which, on August 12, denied that it received any offer or proposal from rain surrounding a proposed merger.
Telkom previously said that any offer or formal proposal will be considered by the board in accordance with its legal obligations.
The Telkom board has a legal and fiduciary duty to consider all bona fide offers,” Telkom said on Wednesday.