Saudi Arabia bankrolls KKR-led bid for €15bn Vodafone towers business

Saudi Arabia bankrolls KKR-led bid for €15bn Vodafone towers business

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is helping bankroll what is set to be the winning bid for a stake in Vodafone’s €14.8bn towers business led by private equity groups KKR and Global Infrastructure Partners, according to people familiar with the matter.

The consortium, which features Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, is on course to buy into one of the largest tower businesses in Europe, beating competition from Spain’s Cellnex, the people said.

Vodafone has been seeking to sell a stake in its masts business for many months after spinning out the unit early last year. The company operates 83,000 towers across 10 European countries, including the UK. Vodafone currently owns 82 per cent of the operation.

Sovereign wealth funds from the Gulf have been active across global markets as the oil-rich region enjoys a boom from high energy prices. The deal would give Saudi Arabia exposure to critical European communications infrastructure.

It is a sign of how, as rising interest rates make acquisitions more difficult to finance, dealmakers are forming consortiums and bringing in deep-pocketed Gulf investors able to write large equity cheques.

The telecoms group’s chief executive, Nick Read, initially said he was pursuing an industrial merger with either Germany’s Deutsche Telekom or France’s