Athlone Investments Closes Acquisition of African Telecom and Data Centre Provider

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL--(Marketwired - Aug. 28, 2014) - Athlone Investments Limited (the "Company")(ATL:TA)(TASE:ATLN) is pleased to announce it has completed the previously announced Transaction (the "Transaction"), wherein the Company has acquired 75% of Vaninga & Investimentos Limitada ("Vaninga"), a Mozambican telecom and data centre provider.

In connection with the Transaction, two new members have joined the Board of Directors, being Gordon Edwards as Executive Chair and Ross Macdonald as the incoming CEO.

Gordon was a co-founder of global IT powerhouse Datatec. His role was to expand the business internationally where he was responsible for numerous acquisitions and rapid corporate growth. Datatec was nominated as South Africa's most global company for three years in a row in the late 1990's. During this time Gordon also served on Microsoft's Mobility advisory board. Gordon's background is in ICT infrastructure, telecoms and application software.

Ross was a member of the founding team of South African Telecom giant MTN. He was responsible for the vision and strategy for MTN's Pan-African expansion. Travelling the continent in the late 1990's and early 2000's he identified and engaged local partners, regulators and government officials and secured the first half dozen mobile licenses that formed the foundation for MTN's later international expansion. The bulk of MTN's operations were later acquired in a single transaction when they bought Investcom in 2006. His background is in engineering, finance and strategy with a strong emphasis on emerging markets.

Stan Bharti Co-Chairman, stated, "We are very excited about the prospects of the new APIO and its keystone acquisition Vaninga. We are well positioned to become the dominant data centre provider in Mozambique, initially, and thereafter to expand and become a major player across Africa. The management team we have secured is World Class and we have every confidence they will ensure that Vaninga and ultimately APIO will reach its full potential."

Management

The company is also pleased to announce significant additions to its operational management team with the appointment of Edwin Thompson as Chief Operating Officer, Jan Holtzhausen as Chief Technology Officer and Scott Moore as President.

Edwin is a 25 year telecom industry veteran and former General Manager for MTN Technology and Infrastructure with responsibility for all Datacenters. He has extensive last mile experience in emerging markets across Africa and the Middle East.

Jan is acknowledged by Dell and F5 as a World Leader in Cloud Solutions. He is the first African to be ISECOM /OSSTMM certified. He has extensive global experience with Unix/Microsoft and Defined the "4 aspects of performance testing" now used as standard by ISEB. He has extensive experience across multiple African markets.

Scott is a finance executive with over 25 years of experience in public and emerging markets. He presently serves as COO of the Merchant Bank Forbes & Manhattan, Inc. He has raised over $400 million in emerging markets in the past eight years. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Toronto and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.

Brand Strategy

In conjunction with the closing, the Company is pleased to unveil its new brand name and logo; APIO. Latin for connect or join, our brand reflects our Pan African strategy for broadband, joining Africans across the continent and the globe.

In the coming weeks APIO will be announcing further operational updates as services are rolled out in Maputo. We will also be applying to change our ticker on the Tel Aviv stock exchange to better represent our new brand and direction.

About APIO

APIO's subsidiary Vaninga & Investimentos Limitada is a Mozambican telecommunications operator licensed to provide a full range of fixed and wireless services nationally. It will focus on the provision of carrier neutral data centre services which are in very short supply in Mozambique and in Sub Saharan Africa generally. The company will launch services in Maputo in October and have already pre-sold the full capacity of rack space available.

In addition to traditional data centre services such as hosting and co-location, Vaninga plans to provide, a range of Cloud based services such as Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service, virtual servers, secure storage and media streaming. Its customers include banks, telecommunications operators, Government, SME's and Consumers.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Information

This press release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Israeli securities legislation. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements regarding the Company's business model. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; the actual results of current exploration activities; future prices of mineral prices; failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; accidents, labour disputes and shortages and other risks of the mining industry. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.