Ten years after deciding to sell its Mauritanian subsidiary, Tunisie Telecom has finally accepted an offer from Telecel Group. Explanations.
The Mauritanian-Tunisian telecommunications company Mattel has, for more than ten years, been at the heart of an intense struggle between operators. Mattel has indeed whetted many appetites since 2011. And particularly that of Orange. But the French, in 2012 then in 2022, will have failed twice to buy the company based in Mauritania. Property of Tunisie Telecom - which owns 51% - Mattel had indeed, ten years ago, been the subject of a takeover proposal by Orange, which then offered a check for 100 million euros. The sale was finally canceled after negotiations between the Tunisian government and Orange.
The agreement given by Kaïs Saïed
It was in 2011 that Tunisie Telecom decided to sell Mattel. At the time, the Tunisian operator was pressured by its Emirati strategic partner, Emirates International Telecommunications (EIT), which held 35% of the shares of the Tunisian group, to reorganize to better deal with competition on the local Tunisian market. It was then a question of concentrating, for Tunisie Telecom, on the granting of the global license to Tunisiana, which later became Ooredoo Tunisie. If Tunisie Telecom had therefore announced that it wanted to separate from Mattel, this required the green light from the government.
After the failure of discussions with Orange France, but also with other potential buyers, Tunisie Telecom finally gave up the sale of Mattel in 2014. To maintain a certain competitiveness, the group, 65% owned by the Tunisian state, had to reinvest in its Mauritanian subsidiary. A few years later, and as Mattel became competitive again, Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed ended up giving his approval to a sale of all the shares of Tunisie Telecom. Enough to whet the appetite of Axian, which had also offered a check for 100 million euros to obtain the shares of Tunisie Telecom but which also planned to take over 24,5% of the company belonging to the men of Mauritanian cases Mohamed Ould Bouamatou and Béchir Moulaye El Hassen.
The vain attempts of Orange
In addition to the Malagasy group, several operators have also advanced their pawns: the Moroccan operator Inwi, owned by the royal holding company Al Mada and advised by Lazard, but also Orange which, via its Senegalese subsidiary Sonatel, was once again excluded from the file for submitting an offer that was too low. Despite Axian's satisfactory proposal, the takeover of Mattel was not validated by Carthage. While the Tunisian presidency gave itself the month of June 2022 as a deadline, it finally accepted the offer of an outsider: Telecel Group. On April 4, an agreement was signed between Tunisie Telecom, Telecom BSA and Comatel – the companies of Mohamed Ould Bouamatou and Béchir Moulaye El Hassen – to ratify the sale of Mattel to Telecel.
The group, based in Mauritius and the United Kingdom, is thus pursuing its African strategy. Present on the continent since 1986, the mobile operator has completed four transactions in Africa since 2018 and plans, according to a company press release, to invest more than 700 million dollars over the next three years, "mainly in acquisitions of mobile operators, the construction of infrastructure for fiber optics and in infrastructure”. Mattel holds more than 30% market share in Mauritania, just behind Mauritel, a subsidiary of Maroc Telecom. In 2021, the Mauritanian company exceeded its objectives, thus attracting several investors.