Thai conglomerate Charoen Pokphand and Norway’s Telenor are to merge their telecom units in the south-east Asian country in a deal that will create the kingdom’s dominant provider worth more than $8.6bn.
CP, Thailand’s biggest conglomerate, has a significant presence in agriculture, food and retail — where it faced a competition review for its $10.6bn takeover of Tesco stores in Thailand and Malaysia last year.
The proposed tie-up between Telenor’s Dtac unit and CP’s True Corporation comes as telecom groups across south-east Asia join forces to roll out 5G infrastructure and defray the high costs of investing in new technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud services.