South Africa's MTN Group has ended talks with Weather Investments to acquire $10bn of assets of Orascom Telecom Holding, Bloomberg has reported. The talks failed after Algeria's government blocked a possible sale to MTN of Orascom's largest and most profitable unit, Djezzy. Algeria has said it would make an offer to Orascom for the local unit, exercising its rights of pre-emption. Orascom Telecom confirmed this month that it received a letter from the Algerian government saying that it was preparing for talks on the possible purchase of the company's unit there.