Revised bid as Isabel dos Santos determines to win Portugal Telecom

Isabel dos Santos, billionaire daughter of the feared Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, tomorrow will deliver an amended public offer for Portugal Telecom.

Before the market opens the Angolan businesswoman will deliver her new terms and conditions to the stock market regulator.

The businesswoman obviously is keen on ensuring her offer is successful in the face of competition from hard-nosed British funds and the French company Altice which has experience in the market sector.

Isabel dos Santos wants to keeps the negotiations going with PT’s Brazilian owners as she does not want to see PT Portugal sold to someone else and its assets in Africa sold off, including a key 25% stake in Angola's Unitel.

PT’s Brazilian owners, Oi, already is considering offers from the French group, the Brits with Portugal’s newly privatised post office CTT keeping an eye on negotiations, as is serial entrepreneur Miguel Pais do Amaral.

Isabel dos Santos is responding to a request for clarification made by the stock market regulator and will have removed some of her more testy conditions, referred to by the Brazilians as "inappropriate, unacceptable and unreasonable."

Dos Santos is offering €1.35 per share, which now is below the market price of the shares which have risen over 15% since negotiations began, closing on Friday at €1.395.

Isabel dos Santos owns significant assets in Portugal including in telecoms (NOS) fuels (Galp) and the bank (BIC Portugal and BPI).

She is the richest woman in Africa and is the eldest daughter of the Angolan President and his first wife, the Russian-born Tatiana Kukanova.

From Wikipedia - controversy remains over the Angolan President:

José Eduardo dos Santos has been accused of leading one of the most corrupt regimes in Africa by ignoring the economic and social needs of Angola and focusing his efforts on amassing wealth for his family and silencing his opposition.

In Angola, nearly 70% of the population lives on less than $2 a day and yet he and his family have amassed a massive sum of wealth, with stakes in the leading businesses of the nation as well as international corporations.

Dos Santos became wealthy when he first took power, but only began amassing his incredibly large assets during and after the Angolan civil wars.

When the ceasefire occurred and large portions of the economy were being partially privatized, he took control of several emerging companies and industries. He helped arrange similar takeovers for several other natural resource industries.

Eventually the Angolan Parliament made it illegal for the president to have financial holdings in companies and organizations. In response to this, Dos Santos supposedly began arranging for his daughter to receive the financial kickbacks and assets from these companies.

In addition he began using the government to take direct control of stakes in companies offered as kickbacks which he indirectly controlled and reaped the benefits of. Despite being barred from direct involvement in the nation’s corporate assets, Dos Santos has managed to still retain large corporate assets through proxies.

Along with this, the government budget had grown over a decade to 69 billion dollars in 2012 through oil revenues. However the International Monetary Fund reported that there was 32 billion in oil revenue simply missing from the government’s ledger.

Eventually the missing money was tracked to have been used on “quasi-fiscal activities”.
It has been alleged that Dos Santos and his cabinet are responsible for silencing the media and harassing journalists who attempt to uncover details about their financial dealings. But none of these assumptions were ever confirmed.

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For another view of Isabel dos Santos, see:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2013/08/14/how-isabel-dos-santos-took-the-short-route-to-become-africas-richest-woman/

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