SMC willing to sell more Liberty shares to QTel

MANILA, Philippines - San Miguel Corp. (SMC) said it is willing to sell more Liberty Telecommunications Inc. shares to Qatar Telecom QSC (QTEL).

The announcement was made after QTEL expressed its intention to hike its stake in San Miguel owned Liberty Telecommunications Inc. to as much as 40 percent.

Foreign companies can own up to 40 percent of a local telecommunication company.

 “We will support them,” SMC president and chief operating officer Ramon S. Ang told reporters in a chance interview. “They want to increase their stake to 40 percent.” QTel, through subsidiaries Wi-Tribe Asia Ltd and QTel West Bay Holdings Inc. acquired 32.65 percent to Liberty Telecoms. Wi-Tribe owns 5.9 percent of Liberty Telecoms while QTel West Bay hold 26.75 percent.

Ang said there are ongoing talks with QTEL but refused to confirm if San Miguel will enter into another business with the firm.

In an earlier interview, Qatar Telecom chairman Sheikh Abdullah Bin Saud Al Thani said that they would like to buy more shares of Liberty. “There is nothing stopping us from investing,” Al Thani said. “We are extremely happy to be in the Philippines.

Al Thani said that San Miguel has been a good partner to them. “We are exploring more business with San Miguel.”

When asked if they would like to partner with other Filipino firms, Al Thani said that there is no exclusivity with their contract with San Miguel. “We look at the opportunity and we go with it.”

In 2008, San Miguel and state-controlled Qtel entered into a deal to venture into wireless broadband and mobile phone services in the Philippines using Liberty as a vehicle. Qtel has been expanding rapidly outside its home market, aiming to join the ranks of the world’s top 20 telecoms firms by 2020.

“For companies here in the Philippines, the opportunities for growth are significant. Yours is a forward looking nation, and increasingly the center of global economic gravity is shifting from the West to the East,” Al Thani said.

“By working together, companies in the Middle East and the Philippines have enormous opportunity,” he added.

Al Thani said that the pace of growth in emerging markets will overtake that of the mature markets. This makes Asia more important than ever. “Investors should be confident in the potential of the Philippine economy,” he stressed.