Telecom tycoon Sunil Mittal makes overseas call

By Rina Chandran

MUMBAI (Reuters) - When billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal opened the first of his group's retail stores in April, he chose his hometown of Ludhiana in Punjab, where as a young man he had started a business making bicycle parts.

The announcement this month that his flagship telecom company Bharti Airtel Ltd is in talks with South Africa's MTN Group in what could be India's biggest foreign takeover shows he is also willing to go great distances to raise the profile of the companies he has built.

A successful deal -- talks are still "exploratory" -- could dwarf Tata Steel's $13 billion buy of Corus Plc last year, and catapult Mittal into India's top league where Ratan Tata, the Ambani brothers and the Aditya Birla Group have all made ambitious overseas acquisitions in recent years, putting India on the global businesses map.

Some analysts have questioned if Mittal, who is not related to steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, has the ability to pull off a deal that could cost upwards of $20 billion for control of MTN in the present market environment.

But others say the yoga and golf enthusiast, who is on the advisory boards at Harvard Business School and the University of Pennsylvania, is ready.

"He would not have initiated talks if he didn't have his bases covered," said S. Subramanian, head of investment banking at Enam Securities, which is not involved in the deal. "He has the chutzpah to pull it off if he wants to."

Mittal, who co-chaired last year's World Economic Forum in Davos, has so far preferred entering joint ventures with overseas partners: Wal-Mart Stores Inc for a wholesale venture, France's Axa for insurance and asset management, and a Rothschild arm for fresh produce.

He has also surrendered stakes to overseas firms: Southeast Asia's largest telecoms firm, SingTel, owns more than 30 percent of Bharti Airtel, and Del Monte Pacific has 40 percent in FieldFresh Foods, the Bharti-Rothschild venture.