Telenor International has established a subsidiary in Pakistan to manage financial matters of Telenor Pakistan, told us reliable sources in Group’s Pakistani arm; however, Telenor Pakistan’s spokesperson denied any financial involvement of this newly established company – and termed it Telenor Pakistan’s subsidiary.
When asked about the functions of this new firm, Telenor Pakistan’s spokesperson communicated us following, through an email
“Telenor Key Partners (TKP) has been formed as a subsidiary of Telenor Pakistan. The purpose of this concern is to provide worldwide support to members of the Telenor Group on various IT applications and has nothing to do with managing finances. The function has been working in Pakistan for the past 3 plus years. It is a matter of great honor for us that Telenor Pakistan has been selected to carry out this activity for the group. This shows the exceptional talent that we have in Pakistan and specifically at Telenor Pakistan.”
He also noted about the CEO of this company, as following
“ Mr. Imran Ashraf has been spearheading this project since its launch and in recognition of his extraordinary service has been appointed as CEO of this new subsidiary.”
It was interesting to learn that Mr. Imran Ashraf, who comes from a financial background will head a company, that is primarily focused on IT applications. It merits mentioning here that Mr. Imran was in finance department at a Malaysian power generation company, called “Liberty Power”, before his appointment at Telenor Pakistan as Director Finance, almost 3 years back.
Moreover, formation of this new company happened just few weeks after Peter Kuncewicz, Chief Financial Officer of Telenor Pakistan moved to Indosat, Indonesia. And we are still to hear about his replacement.
All this sounds very adventurous to me – but we are yet to see the size of this new company to actually evaluate its capacity to develop IT application for Telenor group.
As a side note, there are strong rumors in the market that Zong is looking for (partial) buyout of Telenor Pakistan – little odd, but news is defiantly hot out there in the industry.
Zong’s spokesperson didn’t deny any possibility of talks between Telenor International and China Mobile (headquarters) for such partial or total buyout.
Those who are justifying this rumor say that
So the game at Telecom industry is not going to be over soon – we have plenty of play to watch!
Update: Dawn News also covered story of Telenor and China Mobile Merger/ Acquisition here
