NSE postpones scheduled Airtel Africa’s $4.4bn listing to Monday

The secondary listing of Airtel Africa, the parent company of Airtel Nigeria, shares on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) earlier scheduled for July 5 has been postponed to Monday.

The company will be listing through a cross border secondary listing at N363 per share, following an Initial Public Offering by way of book building, a circular from NSE said.

The stock exchange confirmed on Thursday that it had granted a listing waiver to Airtel Africa despite not meeting the minimum requirement of 300 shareholders, but explained yesterday that it postponed the listing which had been scheduled for Friday to ensure the telecoms company meets its listing requirements.

Airtel Africa is the number two mobile operator in Africa after the MTN group. The company has subsidiaries in 14 African nations including Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, DR Congo, Zambia, Nigeria, and Seychelles.

India’s Bharti Airtel last week offered shares in its African unit via a London IPO and it would dual list in Nigeria, its biggest market in Africa, the newswire reported. The NSE said it postponed the cross-border listing of 3.76 billion shares of Airtel Africa, but allowed Airtel to go ahead with an investor presentation. It said that it would inform the market on when the conditions had been met.