The more, the merrier. That seems to be the strategy being adopted by prospective bidders for the proposed merger of telecom giants Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL).The six investment banks, which have put in their bids for the proposed merger will make their presentations by the end of this month in New Delhi. Interestingly, five of the six bankers have put in their bid as a consortium with consulting firms.DSP Merrill Lynch has put in its bid with consulting major KPMG while Kotak has joined hands with Deloitte. ICICI Securities (I-Sec) will put in its bid with NM Rothschild-ABN Amro, apart from AF Ferguson which will also be a part of this. In the case of SBI Capital Markets, its bid will be with HSBC and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), while Lazard and Ernst & Young (E&Y) will form another consortium. JP Morgan, the sixth bidder, however, has decided to go it alone. It is learnt that almost every consortium also has a law firm as part of its bid to advise it on legal issues.“This exercise is not just about merging the two entities. There is a fair amount of consultation work since both the firms will have to address a host of human resource issues,” explained sources. BSNL has close to four lakh employees while MTNL’s staff strength is just under 60,000. The bids for the proposed merger closed a couple of days ago with the government looking at examining a host of options before deciding on the way forward. Officials at most banks declined to comment on the issue.It may be recalled that the National Democratic Alliance government had proposed to merge MTNL and BSNL two years ago. At that stage, bankers had made their presentations and in all six options were suggested. One of them was creating a holding company and merging MTNL into BSNL. The proposal, however, was never worked on and has recently been revived by the present government. Tie-ups galore
