BSNL-MTNL Merger Still Active; Proposes A Holding Company

The Economic Times: The government still hasn’t abandoned the plans to merge the two state-owned telcos – MTNL (it operates in Delhi and Mumbai circles) and BSNL (rest of the country). The centre is reportedly considering a new strategy where in the first phase, the government may form a holding company with BSNL and MTNL as its subsidiaries. After three years, the two PSUs would be merged into one entity.
A consortium of consultants led by ICICI Securities has recommended this as the most practical approach to synergise operations of the two PSUs. There were other options too: The first option was acquisition of MTNL by BSNL followed by an IPO by BSNL. Then came in merging MTNL into BSNL, merging BSNL into MTNL, and MTNL acquiring BSNL.

Comments have been disabled for this post