Mumbai, June 3: Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Communications is in talks with suitors from Abu Dhabi to Johannesburg to divest a strategic stake in the mobile telephony company. Talks are, however, at an “advanced stage” with Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat compared to South African operator MTN that the company has engaged with earlier, said sources.

Sources who declined to be named said at this point R-Com was trying to ascertain which global telecom operator offers the Indian company the best valuation and ease of striking a deal. It is in this effort that chairman Anil Ambani is likely to head to Johannesburg on Monday, they added.

An Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group spokesperson declined to comment on these developments.

On Wednesday, R-Com had informed the stock exchanges that it had received proposals from international telecom players evincing an interest in picking up a strategic stake in the company.

The structure of a potential deal with either Etisalat or MTN is likely to be complicated, said an investment banker. As far as Etisalat is concerned, the operator already has a joint venture in India with the Dynamix Balwas group that has the unified services access licence in 15 circles.

Under the current merger and acquisition (M&A) regulations for the telecom sector, a single operator cannot hold a stake of more than 10 per cent in a circle.

However, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) has proposed to change this rule. So the deal with Etisalat can go through if the M&A rules are changed or the Saudi Arabia-based operator sells its stake in the existing JV with Dynamix Balwas.

In May 2007, R-Com had started talks with MTN to try and forge a $66-billion behemoth before Mukesh Ambani scuttled the deal by threatening to invoke a right of first refusal on a stake sale.

If R-Com chooses to go with the South African operator once again, it is possible that the deal this time will not involve elaborate cross-holdings.

The exact contours of a tie-up between the two are not clear at this point, but MTN may pick up a stake in R-Com, said sources.

Earlier this week, MTN confirmed that its group’s president and CEO, Phuthuma Nhleko, was going to step down. Nhleko will leave MTN by March 2011.

Nhleko will not renew his “long-term contract of employment, which ends on June 30, 2010”, the group said in a statement.

“Consequently, he will stand down as group president and CEO. Nhleko has, however, agreed with the board to continue in his current role up to March 2011.”

Until then, he has agreed to focus on “achieving certain key objectives” – and these include the takeover of some African assets from Orascom and a possible deal with R-Com.

Realty split

The two Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, have also sorted out prickly issues surrounding the division of real estate assets of the undivided Reliance empire, sources said.

The move to resolve the tangle over some real estate assets that hadn’t been divided between the two groups at the time of demerger was initiated around a week ago. Some real estate assets in Mumbai and Delhi have changed hands, including residential apartments in Mumbai. It is learnt that three floors of a building called Y2K in the upscale Bandra Kurla commercial district have been handed over to the Anil Ambani group.

A similar effort was replicated in New Delhi.