9mobile denies involvement in Teleology’s N55b debt

• Published On: 20 July 2024 at 14:56

9mobile has declared that it has nothing to do with the N55 billion debt owed by its minority stakeholder, Teleology Limited, to Keystone Bank.Teleology Limited was not a party to the court proceedings.

According to Nairametrics, the company issued the statement on Saturday in response to media reports claiming that 9mobile had been ordered by a court to pay N55 billion.

9mobile argued that the reports were "false and defamatory" in terms of how they harmed the company's reputation.

"The Management of 9mobile wishes to inform the concerned public and critical stakeholders that, contrary to this misleading headline, Emerging Markets Telecommunication Services Limited (EMTS), trading as 9mobile was neither a party to any suit nor affected by the order said to have been made against it as an entity," 9Mobile stated in a news release.

The corporation contends that the court case, Keystone v. Teleology Limited, has nothing to do with 9Mobile. The telecom company also noted that its name was never mentioned throughout the court proceedings and questioned why it was connected after the verdict.

"For the avoidance of doubt, no decision was entered against 9mobile, and the effort to link our corporate entity to a transaction involving our minority shareholder, Teleology Nigeria Limited, in its legal dispute with Keystone Bank, is untrue and malicious.

"9Mobile is now under new ownership, with a 95.5% controlling stake in the company, and has not been held accountable for the actions of its minority shareholder in the aforementioned lawsuit. "Our business transformation programme has begun, and we are ready to reclaim our market position," the company claimed.

According to reports, a Federal High Court in Ikoyi, Lagos, mandated Teleology Nigeria Limited to pay N55.7 billion to Keystone Bank Limited.

Teleology Nigeria Limited was accused of failing to service the loan facility used to finance the company's acquisition of strategic assets in Emerging Markets Telecommunication Services Ltd., doing business as 9Mobile Network, in a lawsuit filed on behalf of Keystone Bank Limited by its lawyer, Bode Olanipekun, SAN.

Olanipekun added that, despite the bank's offer to restructure the loan facility, Teleology failed to meet various conditions precedent, operational conditions, transaction dynamics, and other conditions outlined in the restructuring letter.

Olanipekun stated that instead of being compensated for the defendant's debt obligations, the plaintiff received a presentation from PAC Limited that included, among other things, a debt sale and/or acquisition by Bankruptcy Remote Special Purpose Vehicle in a proposed transaction structure that resembled a debt to equity conversion without the defendant having to make an immediate down payment or repay the defendant's enormous amount of outstanding debt.

Following 9mobile's loan default to banks under its former owners, Teleology Nigeria Limited acquired the mobile phone firm in 2018 via a bidding process led by Barclays Africa and involving 13 Nigerian institutions, including GT Bank, Zenith Bank, Access Bank, and others.

The acquisition procedure concluded with the first $50 million deposit and an additional $251 million paid to the banks that acquired the company.