Spain’s Telefonica is in talks with billionaire John Malone’s Liberty Global to explore a merger of its British mobile operator O2 with Liberty’s Virgin Media cable network company, Reuters reported.
Telefonica has been weighing options for the mobile business since 2016 when a previous £10.3 billion (US$12.9 billion) deal takeover of O2 by Three UK, controlled by CK Hutchison Holdings, was blocked by European antitrust regulators, banking sources said.
A combination of O2 and Virgin Media would reshape Britain’s telecom industry, leaving Hutchison and Vodafone stranded without their own fixed-line consumer networks.
If successful, the deal would end uncertainty around the fate of one Britain’s biggest mobile operators after it was repeatedly touted as a possible candidate for a sale or a stock listing in recent years.
It would also offer Telefonica a way to partially cash out from O2 while retaining a presence in Britain, which the company sees as one of its “core markets” along with Spain, Germany, and Brazil.
Full Content: Reuters
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