The Indian government has made its mind to sell the entire shareholding in Tata Communications Ltd which is definitely not a very big surprise for the people. The current government has clearly set its targets to bring down the number of public sector undertakings as well as in mood to gather all its resources from different sources of investment. The selling would be done in parts which is 16.12% will be sold through an offer for sale mode while the other remaining will go to Panatone Finvest Ltd.
BACKGROUND
Connectivity in more than 200 countries
Connectivity of 60% businesses to cloud giants
Across more than 50 entities of globe
Tata Communications Ltd.; a much known name in telecom industry was initially a central government undertaking incorporated in 1986 also known as Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited. It was then sold to the conglomerate Tata group in 2003 by the then BJP government.
- It has more than 5 lakh km network area covered through subsea fibre and close to 2.1 Lakh terrestrial fibre.
- Headquartered in Pune; it is listed on NSE and BSE.
- The services provided are primarily Ethernet, SD-WAN, Content Delivery Networks, Internet, Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS).
- It entered the much innovative cloud services with its public and private points of presence in 2014.
- It has primarily two subsidiaries which are Tata Communications Transformation Services (TCTS) and Tata Communications Payment Solutions Limited (TCPSL).
- Recently in 2019; the company was in news for collaborating with PGA European Tour for helping or providing support to start ups that look up to start and achieve their desired dreams.
- It is prominently the world’s largest wholly owned fibre backbone network having the global alliance network of major players like Microsoft, Cisco and TCS.
CURRENT SHAREHOLDING PATTERN
Now the current shareholding pattern of Tata communications in case of promoters segment is as follows:
Panatone Finvest- 34.8%
Tata Sons- 14.1%
Rest shareholding is distributed to non-promoter institutions and non- institutions. The company showed a great graph on the end of 2020 but there was a slow & steady growth witnessed.
“Tata Communications Ltd has today (Friday) signed an amendment agreement between the President of India, Panatone Finvest Ltd, Tata Sons Private Ltd and the company for sale of the entire shareholding in the company by the Government of India,” as informed by company while filing in BSE.
Change or perish was the initial principal.
The present scenario focuses on Grow or perish.
For a country to grow; the funds to be parked on efficient places.
A country like India when is heading towards its 75th year of independence needs to take some strong decisions in order to fulfill its commitments.
In order to do that; the investment should be parked at more viable places.
The theory of comparative advantage was the basis of economy; but it has to be applied on the management of government resources too. With scarce resources the challenges faced by Modi government are quite too large. This move is also a part of it. The divestment will lead to more focus on core sectors like defence, education, health and infrastructure.
