|
REUTERS, OSLO- Norwegian telecoms group Telenor said on Friday it hopes for an amicable solution to a row with Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus over their Bangladesh company Grameenphone which it aims to list on the Dhaka bourse. Yunus, who won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize with his Grameen Bank for work to lift millions out of poverty, said Telenor had failed to honour a 1996 agreement to hand full control of Grameenphone over to Yunus's Grameen Telecom.
Late on Thursday, Yunus threatened to take legal action against Telenor, which owns 62 percent of Grameenphone, if it did not fulfil the agreement with Grameen Telecom, which owns the rest.
Telenor has said the deal was invalid. Telenor shares were down 1.1 percent at 80.20 crowns by 0903 GMT, largely in line with a 1.2 percent fall on the DJ Stoxx Telecoms Index .
"We are surprised and disappointed," head of communications Paal Kvalheim told Reuters in response to the threatened lawsuit. "We have had a good dialogue lately and we had hoped to continue this," he said.
Telenor reiterated that it still aimed to list Grameenphone, the top cellphone operator in the South Asian country.
"The IPO could be this year or next ... At the moment, things are a bit unpredictable," Telenor spokesman Dag Melgaard said. He declined to say how much Telenor would hold after an IPO.
Yunus, who pioneered micro-loans to the rural poor -- mostly women -- of Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, urged the Norwegian government, which holds 54 percent of Telenor, to step in to resolve the issue.
"I am confident the people of Norway will see to it that the companies that they own and control honour their written intention, in all cases, and especially when dealing with the poor women of Bangladesh," Yunus said in a statement.
Grameenphone has provided mobile phones to 300,000 women in villages who earn a living from local telephone services.
Yunus said he hoped legal action would prove unnecessary "because the owners of Telenor will require the company to honour the intention it expressed" to transfer ownership and control of Grameen Phone to his group.
Yunus said that although both Telenor and Grameen Telecom were seeking growth in the phone company, Telenor's agenda to "maximize returns for the benefit of its owners" was in conflict with the "social and non-profit agenda of Grameen Telecom".
Telenor has also faced criticism over safety conditions and use of child labour by its subcontractors in Bangladesh.
A new report from public broadcaster NRK on Thursday disclosed another incident of child labour at a subcontractor to a Grameenphone supplier.
"Grameen and I can not be identified with this," said Yunus, who is due to meet with Norwegian officials later on Friday.
Telenor said Yunus had met its management on Thursday, and that "these issues were not discussed at all".
|
News 
RSS