RIYADH: Saudi Telecom Co. (STC) said yesterday it would cut 14 percent of its work force at home and boost efforts to expand abroad after being rebuffed by France’s Vivendi over a stake in Maroc Telecom.

Chief Executive Saud Al-Duweish said he hoped Vivendi would have a change of heart after the French media group declined to sell its Moroc Telecom stake, but later told Al Arabiya TV that it had not made an official bid.

“We tested the waters for Maroc Telecom but we didn’t get a positive feedback ... We hope Vivendi will change its mind,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of an event that marked the launch of a new logo for the company.

“We are interested in the Middle East and North Africa in general but we are looking at North Africa in particular.”

STC is among firms that are competing for a 25 percent stake in Oman Telecommunications Co.

Saudi Telecom is under intense pressure to improve profitability as a regional telecom war heats up, with rivals like Kuwait’s Zain and Emirates Telecommunications competing within Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Telecom has spent in excess of $6 billion on foreign expansion in the past 15 months.

The expansion has already started paying off. The firm’s second-quarter net profit beat forecasts and rose 24 percent, while it was struggling to show any growth at all just a year earlier.

Vivendi owns 53 percent of Maroc Telecom, which has a market value of around $20 billion.

“We are comfortable with the financing of any transaction that may seem worth it ... We have excellent ratings,” Al-Duweish said.

The company paid $2.56 billion this year to buy a 35 percent stake in Oger Telecom.

Oger Telecom owns 55 percent of fixed-line operator Turk Telekom and 75 percent of Cell C, South Africa’s third-largest mobile operator. It offers Internet services in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan. Oger Telecom had 35 million users and revenues of $6.9 billion in 2006.

Its first foreign investment was last year after it took a 25 percent stake in Malaysia’s Maxis in a $3 billion deal that opened up markets in India and Indonesia.

“We have already reached 1.5 million mobile phone clients in Indonesia, which makes us the third largest operator there,” he said. “The Indian market adds 6 million new mobile phone users every month.”

Saudi Telecom also took a 26 percent stake in a consortium that won a third mobile phone license in Kuwait for $929.7 million. “For Kuwait, all is set, we will launch it within two months,” he said.

Al-Duweish said he was still interested in participating in the stalled privatization of Algeria Telecom.

“We will always be interested in Algeria, which is a country with huge potential.”

Internal consolidation within the group was key to improving efficiency, Al-Duweish said, and he hoped to cut expenses by 15 percent. The group planned to cut 3,000 jobs out of its work force of 21,000, or 14 percent, he said.

“The merger of the internal business entities will save 15 percent of our costs. You will see this in our financial statement,” he said.