Remember that time Nigeria took MTN to court because they failed to deactivate unregistered SIM cards? It resulted in the biggest fine in the world, at the time Nigeria demanding $5.2 billion.

Now, although the fine dropped to $3.4 billion, MTN still have not decided what to do about the situation: Do they pay or do they not pay?

While the public is completely unaware of any of their decisions, it has ultimately affected their market capitalisation ranking, closing at R244 billion on Wednesday.

This trailed Vodacom’s rating of R249 billion, marking the second time in seven years that Vodacom has overtaken MTN. The first time was on 5 April this year. IOL explains:

MTN, which had 229 million customers in 22 countries at the end of March, had revenue of R146 billion and net income of about R20 billion in 2015. Vodacom probably generated R82 billion in sales in the year through March, according to the average forecast of 14 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, and net income of R13 billion. Vodacom reports full-year earnings on Monday.

While MTN sits idly by, waiting to make a final decision, it looks as if their ratings might just continue to drop.

[source: iol]