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This must be another clever way made by Singaporean. ST Telemedia, telecom company owned by Temasek holding, agreed to sell all their shares in Indosat (NYSE: IIT, IDX: ISAT) to Middle East’s Qatar Telecom. The transaction, involving 40.8% shares of second largest Indonesian telecommunication company, valued US$ 1.8 billion in total.

ST Telemedia bought the shares in 2002 through Asia Mobile Holding Pte. Ltd (AMH) for about US$ 600 million. Thus, they gain 3 times higher during 6 years! What a great investment by Temasek!

Again, this move will make Supervision of Business Competition’s punishment about Temasek’s telecommunication monopolistic scheme (that still in case in Supreme Court) go down. Temasek is no longer indirectly having two Indonesian telecom companies. Seems like they had satisfied enough earning billions from Indonesia’s largest, Telkomsel.

Earlier this year, Qatar Telecom has bought 25% of AMH share. Later, the gulf state-own company found that Indosat is a jewelry, wait to be polished. “We believe that Indonesia is a high growth market for telecommunications and that Indosat is very well placed to compete in that market,” Chief Executive Nasser Marafih said in the statement.

Qatar Telecom will join Saudi Telecom and Etisalat to be Middle East investors that have shares in Indonesia. What will happen to Indosat after the transaction? Prior this week, they had already changed their board of commissioners (without any involvement from the Arabians). Hopefully, under Arabic management, Indosat will serve their consumers better.

Indosat reported to have customer increased from 22 millions to 30 millions by first five month this year. It makes the company target back on track. Indosat now serve both GSM and CDMA networks under brand Matrix, Mentari, IM3, and Starone.

Source: Reuters