Orange said to have made offer for T-Mobile UK
Published: 1 June, 2009
READ MORE: UK | Orange | T-Mobile
Consolidation in the UK mobile market is widely expected, but most attention has focused on a possible merger of the UK arms of T-Mobile and 3. Now it transpires that Orange parent France Telecom may have made an offer for T-Mobile UK, but was rejected by Deutsche Telekom, the cellco's owner.
According to the UK's Guardian newspaper, Orange made the offer during the past few months. The British arm was one of the worst performers in Deutsche Telekom's recent quarterly results and it took a writedown charge on the firm that reignited speculation that it would try to sell the unit. However, strengthening Orange was presumably seen as too high a price to pay.
T-Mobile UK gets a new boss, Richard Moat, this week, who is expected to launch a restructuring of the business, but is also likely to entertain bids from private equity firms. In another report, Vodafone is rumored to have proposed exchanging its Turkish business for T-Mobile UK, giving Deutsche Telekom a strong position in the eastern Mediterranean, where it controls Greek operator OTE.
In its most recent results, Deutsche Telekom wrote down by the value of its UK mobile unit by €1.8bn ($2.4bn) taking it down to about $5.3bn.
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