Bekaert reports that it has reached an agreement in principle with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to buy out its 33% equity share in the Bridon-Bekaert Ropes Group (BBRG).

A press release said that the ropes and advanced cords business, which became the BBRG at the end of June 2016, will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Bekaert. “Taking full ownership ... fits within the ambitions and strategy of Bekaert to grow a global ropes and advanced cords business that will create significant value over time for customers worldwide and for the Bekaert Group.”

Bekaert CEO Matthew Taylor said in the release that it made sense for the company to follow this direction as BBRG was established in a period that saw weak markets and integration challenges. "Taking full control ... will allow us to accelerate the turnaround efforts, drive greater synergies between BBRG and the Bekaert Group and take advantage of the complementary nature of the businesses.” He noted that the deal reflects Bekaert’s commitment to and belief in BBRG, and will enable it to focus on helping the business achieve its true potential."

“I will personally take up the role of CEO of BBRG, alongside my existing role as CEO of Bekaert,” Taylor said. He praised the efforts of Bruno Humblet, who he noted had been the driving force behind creating and integrating the Bridon-Bekaert Ropes Group, as well as the Ontario Teachers’  "for the collaborative approach, active cooperation and drive they brought to the joint venture over the last two years."

The agreement, subject to customary closing conditions including regulatory approvals, is expected to be completed in the coming months, the release said.

Nigeria’s Globacom has signed a contract with Huawei to build a second fiber optic submarine cable that will run from Lagos to the southern part of Nigeria.

Per an article in This Day, the new cable, to be known as Glo2, is expected to be completed in the next 18 months. It will have 12 Terabit capacity per second and span 850 km, providing last-mile connectivity to businesses and oil companies in southern Nigeria and beyond.

Nigeria has several submarine cables berthed on its shores, but none has the capacity to provide broadband connectivity to the hinterlands, where there is high demand, the report said. “The situation has compelled telecoms subscribers to call for last-mile connectivity that could cushion the effect of the high cost of broadband bandwidth in the hinterlands, as well as the price differential in bandwidth between Lagos and the hinterlands. The Glo 2 optic fiber submarine cable is expected to address those challenges.”

The plan for the Glo 2 project was launched at a contract signing ceremony by Globacom and Huawei. Globacom’s regional director for technical affairs, Sanjib Roy, said the submarine cable would be built along the Nigerian coast from Alpha Beach in Lagos, where the Glo 1 landing station is located, to the Southern part of Nigeria. He said that the cable would contain three fiber pairs, with the first pair connecting Lagos directly to the southern part of Nigeria, with terrestrial extension to other parts of the country for redundancy and maintenance purposes. The second will be equipped with eight switchable Branching Units (BUs), which will deliver high capacity to offshore oil stations and communities connected directly to BUs, while the third pair will be equipped with two switchable branching units to deliver high capacity to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.

The facility will enable a high capacity connection in the south and provide capacity to offshore oil platforms and the communities. Roy said that the Glo 2 project would boost telecom service delivery in the country by providing economic and social capacity to communities in oil producing regions. It will also digitize oil platforms to improve productivity, upload data to remote oil platforms at the speed of light.

Glo2 complements the Glo 1 international submarine cable built by Globacom in 2010, which is the only international submarine cable in Nigeria managed end to end, from Lagos to London, by one company. It currently provides sufficient bandwidth for the West Africa sub-region.

The board of India’s Sundram Fasteners Limited has promoted Arathi Krishna, the daughter of Sundram Fasteners Chairman Suresh Krishna, as the new managing director, effective April 20.

Per multiple media accounts, Arathi, age 49, earned her way to the top, working for two-and-a-half decades for the company. One of three daughters, she is the only one who joined the family’s fastener business.

A gold medalist in economics, Arathi holds an MBA from the University of Michigan Business School. After on-the-job training in automotive-related business in the U.S., she started her career in 1990, at age 20, as a management trainee at Sundram Fasteners. She became the company’s manager for business strategy and systems in 1993, and general manager in 1998. “I had an easy transition into the company and was easily accepted by employees,” she said in an interview.

An article by K.T. Jagannathan in The Hindu praised Arathi for her management style. She used to go to the shop floor, interact with employees and try to understand technologies, in a company that had a record of never losing a day’s work because of labor issues, according to observers of the company. “Known to be media-shy, soft-spoken but result-oriented and tough when it comes to work, Arathi has acquired wide managerial and business administration skills through her experience in India and abroad. It was under her leadership that the company forayed in sectors like aviation and wind energy.”

Krishna was first appointed to the company’s board in 2006 as managing director (designated as executive director), and later in 2011 re-appointed as managing director (designated as joint managing director), the story said. The company’s consistent growth during the past decade has come with her, along with other family members, at the helm of affairs. She has her expertise in corporate strategy and general management, and under her leadership several new product lines have been set up and stabilized at the company, leading to a robust growth and operating performance.

Arathi was also instrumental in making the workforce at Sundram Fasteners younger, and the work culture more performance-based and technology-oriented. The average employee age at the company is 35 years.

All of the country of Mauritania was left without internet access for two days, and nine other African nations were affected when the African Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable was severed on March 30.

Per media reports, the cable broke near the Mauritanian capital of Noukachott. A trawler is believed to have severed the line. Mauritania, which has a population of 4.5 million people, relies entirely on ACE for internet access. The ACE system, 10,500 miles long, stretches from France to South Africa, providing an internet connection to 22 countries, most of Africa’s west coast. A large part of the west of the continent was affected by outages.

A spokesman for  Orange, which heads the consortium that manages ACE, tweeted a picture of the severed cable taken by workers on a maintenance vessel sent to repair it. Jean-Luc Vuillemin said a trawler raising the cable
off the seabed and slicing through it was the “likely cause.”

Consus Muju Pinestone PF Real Estate, a subsidiary of South Korea’s major wire supplier, Taihan Electric Wire Co., has sold Pinestone Country Club for 78 billion won ($73.4 million).

Per media accounts, Taihan Electric Wire reported that its real estate investment fund agreed to sell the 680,000-sq-m site in Dangjin, South Chungcheong Province Tongyang Leisure and Line Industry. The site includes a golf course and adjacent buildings.

Built in 2006, Pinestone Resort is wholly owned by Consus Muju Pinestone PF Real Estate, in which Taihan Electric Wire has a 71% stake. Taihan said it plans to shed more of its noncore assets so it can focus on its mainstay electric wire business to boost profitability.