Ahead of the game by acquiring cheap spectrum and betting big on 5G, rain chairman Paul Harris believes merger with Telkom would close out unique trif..

With suitors for Telkom now rapidly emerging thick, rain chairman and co-founder Paul Harris visited the BizNews studio to offer the elevator pitch for a merger of his speedboat with the supertanker. Of all the bidders, Harris alone is not in uncharted waters. In 1998, Harris together with partners Laurie Dippenaar and GT Ferreira merged relatively small and youthful RMB with venerable First National Bank. That created FirstRand, a group now worth R390bn, by some margin the most valuable financial services company on the African continent. Harris was today chastised by Pretoria for not following the rules when yesterday publicly disclosing rain’s desire to merge Africa’s leading 5G player with the former State-owned monopoly. He promises to follow the letter of the law - and jump through whatever hoops are necessary to give Telkom’s stakeholders a compelling alternative to being swallowed up by MTN - or continuing to go it alone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices