Bharti Airtel not seeking new buys, sees local shake up

By Devidutta Tripathy

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel, India's top mobile operator, is not actively seeking acquisitions, after its $23 billion planned tie-up talks with South Africa's MTN collapsed, the firm's Chairman Sunil Mittal said on Sunday.

With political rather than commercial factors seen as the deal-killer with MTN, analysts have said Bharti could look at Kuwait's Zain, Sweden's Millicom and Egypt's Orascom.

"Hopefully sometime soon," Mittal told reporters at the Word Economic Forum, replying to a question whether the company was actively looking at new buys.

"We are taking a break," he said.

Bharti Airtel director Akhil Gupta said last week the company would look at buying a stake in Zain if there was an opportunity, but there was nothing on the horizon.

An international acquisition would open new revenue streams for Bharti Airtel as its home market saturates and cut-throat competition is pushing call charges even lower in a market which already offers some of the world's cheapest call rates.

Bharti has maintained that emerging markets, including Africa, were of interest for acquisitions.

Bharti, which also runs a Mobile operation in Sri Lanka, was interested in Millicom's assets in the country, but Etisalat emerged as the winner of the assets.