“The structure of any tower transaction depends on what the sell-side mobile operator is trying to achieve,” says Mohit Singh, Associate Director of M&A at Standard Chartered. “They might be trying to get stranded assets off the balance sheet, reduce opex and release capital for future rollout. Under such circumstances, if your objective is to minimise the burden on the OpCo by lowering lease costs and passing certain risks onto the towerco, you might need to retain a lesser share of future synergies, and up-front cash will be limited as it’s not as attractive a deal for the towerco.”
