Vodafone, the world's biggest cellular group, wanted to increase its stake in South Africa's Vodacom because it was an excellent business, Julian Horn-Smith, Vodafone's deputy chief executive, said this week.
Vodafone owns 35 percent of Vodacom Group. Telkom, Africa's largest telephone company, owns 50 percent and VenFin holds the remaining 15 percent.
But Xolisa Vapi, Telkom's spokesperson, said Vodacom was an important strategic asset to Telkom and "we will also be interested in increasing our stake in Vodacom".
VenFin would not comment because its directors were attending a Vodacom shareholders' meeting in Johannesburg.
Horn-Smith said: "We can own the business if only Telkom, government and the regulator want it to happen."
Market speculation is that Vodafone is lobbying the South African government to convince Telkom and VenFin to dilute their shareholdings.
Horn-Smith, who would not comment on the rumour, said: "We would like to buy more of Vodacom ... there are no talks related to this at this stage."
Asked about Vodacom's challenge to sell an equity stake to black investors as part of the black economic empowerment process, Horn-Smith said: "It's right that everybody feels they have a stake in a system, but we need to be careful not to enrich a small minority."
Horn-Smith said the idea of empowerment was to give opportunities to a lot of people to share in Vodacom's success.
"This could be done through ownership or by developing special services for historically disadvantaged individuals."
Vodacom's black employees have shown interest in acquiring a 5 percent stake in Vodacom that was previously owned by empowerment firm Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI).
When HCI sold its stake in 2002 for R1.5 billion, Vodafone bought 3.5 percent and VenFin bought the remaining 1.5 percent.
Vodacom's black employees are waiting for the decision of the group shareholders to make a decision about their proposal to acquire the shares.
But the workers' acquisition of a 5 percent stake could dilute the shareholdings of Telkom, Vodafone and VenFin, depending on who was prepared to sell.
Horn-Smith said Vodafone encouraged the appointment of people from historically disadvantaged backgrounds to higher positions in Vodacom and this "is starting to happen".
Vodafone is indirectly invested in Africa through Vodacom, and Horn-Smith said the company would like to look at new and old licences on the continent.
But acquisitions would depend on the price and where the licences were. "There is nothing imminent at this stage," he said.
Venfin was up 1c at R27.90 yesterday. Telkom dropped R1.60 to close at R113.40, while the telecoms sector slipped 2.69 percent.