This deal will make Bharti Global, the investment arm of Bharti Enterprises, the largest shareholder in BT Group. Remember, it was British Telecom that had first picked up a 21% stake in Bharti Airtel back in 1997 when India’s telecom market was in its infancy.
With this, Bharti Enterprises becomes yet another Indian corporate house to mark its international foray but acquiring stake in a global conglomerate. Tata Group’s acquisition of UK’s Tetley in the year 2000 was the first major acquisition by an Indian company buying majority stake in a British entity. Then came Welspun India in 2006, buying out an 85% stake in Christy – UK’s leading terry towel brand… The series of Tata Group’s UK acquisitions also include anglo-french steel major Corus Group for 12 billion dollars in 2007 closely followed by the Jaguar-Land Rover deal in 2008 for only 2.3 billion dollars. In 2016, M&M made history by buying UK’s two-wheeler brand BSA; followed by M&M’s acquisition of UK’s Norton Motorcycles in 2020.
Outside of UK, Indian IT companies including Infosys, Wipro and HCL tech have been on a shopping spree to buy Gen AI companies globally.
Bharti’s acquisition of 24.5% stake in BT for roughly 4 billion ranks among the biggest global acquisition deals in UK by an Indian company, after Tata Group.
But remember this is not the first time that Bharti has looked outside of India to expand its network. Bharti Airtel has led operations in Africa since 2010 after acquiring Zain Telecom’s Africa business at an enterprise value of 10.7 billion dollars.
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