Patience you must have, says Voda: Biz in talks with Liberty Global for grabbing Euro assets

Re: Does the uk market not count towards the overlap?

Maybe Ireland as most Cable TV/Broadband is owned by UPC (as with UK they rent the Virgin name), but Vodafone has some fibre and ex-BT assets (formerly from eSat) and a tie-up with the ESB called Siro, but has pulled out of NBS. Formerly Vodafone was mobile only.

Isn't UPC (known as Virgin Media) only cable in UK and Vodafone only mobile in UK.

It's hard to know what the pair of them are up to. A world-wide merger would make most sense? There may be egos involved.

Re: Does the uk market not count towards the overlap?

Does the uk market not count towards the overlap?

No. The words "certain overlapping continental European assets" specifically exclude the UK.

Personally I reckon the "certain" means "not all", and that Liberty Global mean to sell (or more likely JV) the central and Eastern Europe assets (a single business entity for them, UPC), whilst keeping the more attractive German cable business (a business called Unitymedia) for themselves.

Vodafone (who are total mugs when it comes to M&A) might invest in a JV for those rather fragmented UPC businesses, that gives Liberty Global some cash to reduce their large debt pile. Incidentally, the proposed merger of Liberty Global and Toadafone a couple of years ago had particular sticking points around valuation (LG trades at a higher earnings multiple due to its US listing) and debt (LG had a lot more than Toadafone. If this latest deal goes ahead, then the debt will become more equalised, although it won;t address the valuation multiple issue.