Vodafone "to sell Bharti Airtel stake"

 LONDON: Vodafone has held talks with SingTel about the sale of its 10 percent stake in Bharti Airtel which it would need to offload if it won the auction for Hutchison Essar, the Sunday Telegraph reported.

Singapore Telecommunications, Southeast Asia's top telecoms firm, already owns almost 31 percent of Bharti. The newspaper said SingTel had formally lodged its interest with Vodafone and its advisers at UBS.

A spokesman for Vodafone could not be reached for comment.

Vodafone plans to tap into India's expanding telecoms market although it is being challenged in the race for Hutchison Essar by Reliance Communications, the Hinduja group and Hutchison's minority partner in the venture, Essar.