NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s top mobile operator, is in talks to buy a 49 percent stake in South Africa’s MTN Group to create an emerging markets telecoms group, exactly a year after previous talks broke down over who would control a merged entity.

Bharti said the potential deal value was more than $23 billion, though it was not immediately clear how much Bharti valued MTN at.
A combination of MTN, worth $27 billion at Friday’s close, and Bharti, valued at $34 billion, would be among the top 10 global industry players based on subscriber numbers.
Bharti has nearly 100 million subscribers and MTN is sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest mobile operator, also with about 100 million subscribers.
Bharti shares gave up early gains to be flat in a steady Mumbai market .BSESN.
The deal being discussed would also see MTN take a 25 percent interest in Bharti and its shareholders take another 11 percent, the Indian firm said in a statement, noting MTN would pay $2.9 billion.
Bharti called off talks with MTN last year after the South African firm proposed a new structure that would have seen Bharti become a unit of the South African-based group.
MTN then held talks with Bharti rival Reliance Communications, but these also failed.
“I doubt if the merger plan by the two firms that went awry last year will come back to haunt them. One wouldn’t go back a second time unless one is sure,” said Rajesh Jain, chief executive at Mumbai-based Pranav Securities.
Bharti said it was looking to pay 86 rand and 0.5 newly issued Bharti global depositary receipts for each MTN share.
Last year, Bharti and MTN had hoped to create the world’s sixth-largest mobile operator with over 130 million subscribers in 24 countries.
Media and analysts had speculated then that Bharti, which is 30.5 percent owned by Singapore Telecommunications, was eyeing a 51 percent stake in MTN or would engineer their merger in a deal that would value MTN at up to $50 billion.
MTN is present in some of the world’s most lucrative markets, such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Zambia and Uganda.