Kenya Weighs Splitting Biggest Listed Firm Into Three Units

Kenya’s government is considering a separation of the nation’s biggest listed company — Safaricom Plc — into three units as part of a process that may include reducing the state’s 35% stake in the mobile-phone operator.

An assessment has found that there would be “a huge benefit” to the state from splitting the company into a telecommunications firm, a tower operator and its popular mobile-payments platform M-Pesa, Treasury Secretary John Mbadi said in an interview in the capital, Nairobi, on Wednesday. A final plan on breaking up the company and a reduction in the government’s stake has yet to be agreed and would require cabinet approval to be implemented, he said.