How it started
History
In June 2005, the company, named Weather Investments, bought Wind Telecomunicazioni, the third largest Italian mobile phone operator. The total value of the transaction was €12.1 billion.
Also in June 2005, 50% plus 1 share of Orascom Telecom was transferred to Weather Investments.
In 2007 the company acquired the Greek mobile carrier TIM Hellas from Apax Partners and Texas Pacific Group and rebranded it Wind Hellas in a deal worth €3.4 billion (£2.4 billion STG). Unfortunately, the Greek crisis brought the carrier in deep financial troubles, forcing Sawiris to sell the assets of the holding company (Weather Finance III) to a group of creditors, the SSN Ad-Hoc Committee. The transaction has been completed in December 2010.
In early 2008 the company acquired the license to operate mobile services in North Korea under the name Koryolink making history by being the first mobile operator there.
In January 2011, the company decided to change its name to Wind Telecom., due to the intention to bring a new image to the group, focusing to the strong points as leading subject in telecommunications and capitalizing all the value and success achieved by the "Wind" brand in recent years, as declared by Khaled Bichara.
From Wikipedia’s article on Wind Telecom, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2