{"id":294,"date":"2009-06-29T13:23:24","date_gmt":"2009-06-29T13:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-finance-zone.co.uk\/?p=294"},"modified":"2009-06-29T13:23:24","modified_gmt":"2009-06-29T13:23:24","slug":"vodafone-mulls-bid-for-t-mobile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/2009\/06\/29\/vodafone-mulls-bid-for-t-mobile\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodafone ‘mulls bid for T-Mobile’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mobile phone operator Vodafone has declined to comment on a report that it is considering buying T-Mobile UK.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Financial Times reported that the company was interested in acquiring T-Mobile’s UK operations, even though a deal may be blocked by regulators.<\/p>\n

Any such move would make Vodafone the biggest mobile operator in the UK, with a 40% market share.<\/p>\n

Vodafone has a 25% share of the UK market, behind O2. T-Mobile, owned by Deutsche Telekom, has a 15% share.<\/p>\n

Deutsche Telekom has appointed JP Morgan to advise on “strategic options”, the newspaper said. Deutsche Telekom said it did not comment on market rumours.<\/p>\n

Shares in Vodafone were up 0.6% by mid-afternoon.<\/p>\n

Falling sales<\/strong><\/p>\n

T-Mobile UK reported a 21% fall in sales in the first three months of the year. According to the FT, it has an estimated enterprise value of between 3bn euros and 4bn euros ($4.2bn-$5.6bn; \u00a32.5bn-$3.4bn).<\/p>\n

A combined Vodafone\/T-Mobile operation with a 40% UK market share in the UK would leapfrog the current UK market leader O2, which has a market share of about 27%.<\/p>\n

Although the creation of one company with 40% of the UK market would almost certainly lead to competition questions, such large operators already exist in France, Italy and Spain.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Vodafone chief executive Vittorio Colao said that his company was willing to play an active role in consolidation between operators.<\/p>\n

In February, Vodafone and Hutchison Whampoa, which owns mobile operator 3 in the UK, announced plans to merge their Australian mobile phone businesses.<\/p>\n

In May, Vodafone said it was accelerating the pace of its \u00a31bn cost-cutting programme because of the impact of the economic downturn on sales.<\/p>\n

The company was forced to write off \u00a35.9bn in the 12 months to the end of March – mostly related to its Spanish business – as its pre-tax profits fell 53.5% to \u00a34.2bn from \u00a39bn a year earlier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mobile phone operator Vodafone has declined to comment on a report that it is considering buying T-Mobile UK. The Financial<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-takeoversmergers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-finance-zone.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}