Unitech to sell stake in its telecom arm

Real estate major Unitech has finalised its deal to offload stake in its telecom arm Unitech wireless to Norwegian telecom giant Telenor. Unitech will inform the stock exchanges later oday. Unitech is likely to sell its 43% stake for around 1 billion dollars.

The deal will value Unitech's telecom arm at over 2 billion dollars. Just last month another start up telecom firm- Swan Telecom had offloaded 43% stake to Etisalat for 900 million dollars. Unitech is likely to get a higher valuation as it has licences to operate in all 22 service areas and expects to roll out services in the first quarter of calendar year 2009.

The company had earlier said it would invest rs.20000 crores in its telecom operations. TElenor already operates in Pakistan and Bangladesh and is the second largest non-asian operator in asia after vodafone.