A mandatory offer to buy out minority shareholders raised Bharti’s shareholding in Celtel Zambia to almost 97 percent, it said on Friday.
Companies in Zambia are usually delisted if a single shareholder owns more than a 95 percent stake.
There had been speculation the Lusaka Stock Exchange would waive the rule for Celtel, a $740 million company and the largest local firm listed on the exchange.
The delisting is a blow for the exchange, which like other bourses in frontier African markets struggles to attract foreign players due to a lack of liquidity and limited number of listed companies.
India’s Bharti Airtel, which owned about 79 percent of the Zambian unit after acquiring the African assets of Kuwait’s Zain this year, made an offer to buy out minority shareholders in November, in accordance with local law.
Bharti Airtel said in a statement that trading in the company’s shares would not resume because it now held more than a 90 percent of the stake in the company.
“The company intends to delist and shall make an application to delist from the Lusaka Stock Exchange pursuant to the provisions of the listing rules,” it said.
The company also said it would buy all the remaining minority shares.
Celtel Zambia is the second-largest company quoted on the Lusaka exchange, according to Reuters data. The biggest is the cross-listing of South African retailer Shoprite.
Bharti Airtel is waging a price war in sub-Saharan Africa and plans to spend at least $1.1 billion on network upgrades in the next three years.
