New Zealand: Vodacom’s Neotel acquisition faces more speed bumps

Vodacom’s proposed R7 billion acquisition of Neotel is facing yet more headwinds, even before the case gets heard by the Competition Tribunal in late November.

TechCentral has learnt that Cell C and MTN have filed papers at the high court seeking the setting aside of communications regulator Icasa’s decision of 11 June 2015 to approve the deal.

The two operators’ legal manoeuvres come three months after Telkom filed papers at the high court arguing that the procedures Icasa used to approve the Neotel acquisition were “unlawful”. Telkom, too, wants the decision set aside.

In Cell C’s founding affidavit, which TechCentral has in its possession, chief legal officer Graham Mackinnon argues that the way in which Icasa phrased its approval of the Vodacom/Neotel transaction means it has, in effect, not attached any conditions it. “The approval was not, in its express terms at least, given subject to any conditions.”

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