MUMBAI (Reuters) - Bharti Airtel, India's biggest mobile phone operator by users, said on Thursday it had raised $310 million through a secondary share sale in its mobile tower unit Bharti Infratel Ltd.
Bharti Airtel will use the funds primarily to reduce debt, the company said in a statement. Its equity holding in Bharti Infratel has reduced to 71.9 percent following the deal, it said.
Bharti Airtel, headed by billionaire Sunil Mittal, and around a third owned by Singapore Telecommunications, had net debt of nearly $11 billion as of end-December 2014.
The company said it divested 55 million shares in the unit at a price of 350 rupees a share, a 3.7 percent discount to the Bharti Infratel stock's last 30-day average closing price.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that the company was looking at raising as much as $415 million through the sale of shares in Bharti Infratel.
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($1 = 61.7600 rupees)
(Reporting by Aman Shah; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath)
