Tokyo, July 1: British Telecommunications Plc and MCI Communications Corp on Tuesday announced that Concert, the global telecoms firm to be created on their merger, would be listed in London, Tokyo and New York.

"Shares of Concert will be available on the Tokyo exchangeimmediately following the merger of BT and MCI, which is expected this fall," MCI chief executive officer Gerald Taylor told a joint news conference with British Telecom in Tokyo.

BT and US carrier MCI agreed to merge in 1996 to form Concert, but the deal is still awaiting approval from the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Taylor said they expect the deal to be approved by the US authority by late autumn, but he stopped short of giving any likely timing for the listings in New York and London.

BT president Peter Bonfield told the same news conference that the two firms have not decided what percentage of shares will be allocated to Tokyo. "We have to see what the market in Japan makes of the Concert stocks."Clearly we'd Like a good performance of the Concert stock on the Tokyo market and we'll have to see what percentage that works out to," Bonfield said.

BT has already listed its shares in Tokyo. An official at the Tokyo bourse told Reuters on Tuesday that the British telecoms giant could maintain its listing status by simply changing the name to Concert, depending on the form of the planned merger between the two firms.

MCI shares are not listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Helped by the listing announcement, BT shares ended Tuesday trade up 11 yen at 858 yen in Tokyo, making the firm the top percentage gainer on the bourse's foreign section.

Turning to a possible tieup with Japanese telecom giants Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp(NTT), Bonfield stressed the need for "patience" in its attempt to seek an alliance with NTT, adding that no company can afford to go it alone in this rapidly changing global telecom industry.

Bonfield said Concert will continue a dialogue with NTT, despite the Japanese carrier's repeated public assertion of its go-it-alone strategy."We believe we have to be patient as NTT develops their international strategy," Bonfield said. "The force of change (in the telecom industry) is powerful. No company, not even those as large as BT or MCI, can afford to go it alone."

Bonfield said building partnerships in Japan and the Asia-Pacific is one of the five key goals for Concert, citing a forecast that 50 per cent of the world's telecom business will be in Asia by 2004.

Besides the goals of expanding business in the US and European markets, Concert has also set a target to achieve an annual 20 per cent growth in the lucrative systems integration business, Bonfield said.

Asked whether the Asia Multimedia Forum, which groups Asian flagship carriers including NTT, would develop into another global communications alliance, Bonfield said the group's activity would focus on promoting standards of multimedia service.He said he considered it "not a competitive threat to what we are trying to do with Concert".

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.