SRMG establishes Middle East's first content joint venture with Saudi Telecom and Malaysia's ASTRO

This new Content Joint Venture (CJV), which will be based in Dubai, creates the first Content Aggregator in the Middle East and North Africa Region.

The CJV will seek to acquire and manage content produced by regional and international providers, with an end goal of delivering quality and diversified content to all STC customers in Saudi Arabia and globally.

Prince Faisal Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz - Chairman of SRMG, said in a statement: "After decades of success as the region's biggest 'paper' publisher, this revolutionary step takes SRMG to new and additional horizons and enables us to provide quality digital content to approximately 70 million people worldwide via a whole new platform".

STC currently has 18 million mobile users and 4 million fixed line users in Saudi Arabia, as well as 45 million global users with its oversees investments, who will all be benefiting exclusively as a result of this CJV, which will commence operations in early 2009.

"This venture complements SRMG's growth and diversification strategy and further cements our position as a pioneer in the content industry ", added Prince Faisal.

SRMG, the first Arab media company to go public (listed in Saudi stock market since 2006), owns 20% of the CJV, whereas ASTRO has 29% equity and the main shareholder, STC, owns 51% equity.

The announcement was made in Riyadh today in the presence of Prince Faisal Bin Salman and Mohammed Al-Jaser, Chairman of STC and ASTRO's Independent Director, Dato Mohamed Khadar Merican.