Al-Ahmadi Is MTC Chief in Saudi Arabia

RIYADH, 8 July 2007 — The MTC consortium has received official notification from the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) of the formal approval by the Council of Ministers of its SR22.91billion ($6.109 billion) financial bid for the third mobile telecommunications license in Saudi Arabia. This notification allows the MTC consortium to establish a public joint-stock company to hold the license and operate the 3rd mobile telecommunications company in the Kingdom. The 25-year license allows the company to offer GSM, 3G and 3.5G and future state-of-the-art mobile telecommunications services throughout the Kingdom.

Dr. Saad Al-Barrak, CEO, MTC announced that Dr. Marwan Al-Ahmadi will be the chief executive officer of the future public joint-stock company.

MTC has operations in five countries neighboring Saudi Arabia. It is expected that the company will leverage these networks to offer competitive regional roaming. It should also benefit from the ability to maximize utilization of high end technical resources. The expected launch date of MTC’s services in the Kingdom is early 2008. MTC currently holds a 50 percent interest in the consortium which will be reduced to 25 percent following a mandatory initial public offering (IPO) of the new mobile operator in the Kingdom.

Following yesterday’s notification by CITC, the MTC consortium is required to fund 80 percent of the license cost within 3 weeks. The remaining 20 percent is to be made available within 2 weeks of incorporation of the joint stock company, anticipated toward the end of 2007.

MTC consortium is in the process of concluding Islamic Murabaha financing agreements with a consortium of Saudi and international banks to fund license payments and business operations.

MTC consortium is obliged to offer 40 percent of the shares of the company to the public as a key requirement of the incorporation process of the joint stock company. An additional 10 percent of the shareholding is planned to be allocated to the Public Pension Agency and the General Organization for Social Insurance, 5 percent for each.