India's Reliance Communications may finally be able to cash in on a sale of its subsea cable business Reliance Globalcom.
The operator has confirmed it is in advanced talks regarding the sale of Globalcom to a consortium of global private equity funds.
The proposed consortium is being led by Samena Capital, which focuses on investments in Asia, the middle east and North Africa.
While RCom stressed that there is no guarantee that a deal will take shape, the negotiation process has made it to the due diligence stage.
RCom has been seeking a payoff from its Globalcom business for at least a year. The company had originally planned to spin off the unit via an IPO and listing on the Singapore stock exchange.
RCom received approval for a listing in June last year, but was forced to abandon the public offer of 75% of Globalcom the following month, blaming unfavorable market conditions.
The company last month subsequently entered talks with Bahrain's Batelco to sell 80% of Globalcom for around 6 billion rupees ($1.11 billion).
But this deal seems to have fallen through as well. RCom's announcement states that “RCom and Samena Capital are no longer in talks with Batelco for the purposes of the [Globalcom] transaction.”