S&R, Bharucha, AZB lead on sale of Vodafone, Idea tower biz to ATC Telecom

Vodafone India and Idea Cellular are selling their standalone telecom tower businesses to ATC Telecom Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd for about $1.2 billion (Rs. 7,850 crore)..S&R Associates acted for their long standing client Vodafone India and the team was led by Partners Rajat Sethi and Radhika Iyer along with Jagriti Mohata, Dhruv Nath, Raya Hazarika, Meher Mehta and Sushmita Sur..Slaughter and May acted as international counsel for Vodafone..Bharucha & Partners advised Idea Cellular and the team was led by Senior Partner Alka Bharucha along with Senior Associate Ayesha Bharucha and Swathi Girimaji and Associates Amrita Vyas and Aishwarya Gupta..AZB & Partners acted for ATC Telecom and the team was led by Delhi Partners Gautam Saha, Amrita Patnaik and Heena Singh along with Swati Chauhan, Roy George, Namita Das, Vinit Nalavadi, Harshit Chandra, Aditi Agarwal, Punita Gupta, Karthika Annamalai and Aman Jain. Ravi Prakash advised on tax issues..The standalone tower businesses of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular are pan-Indian passive telecom infrastructure businesses, comprising a combined portfolio of approximately 20,000 towers with a combined tenancy ratio of 1.65x as of 30 June 2017..The deal, which is expected to be completed in the first half of 2018, will consolidate ATC’s position as the second-largest telecom tower company with about 80,000 towers.