Orange Tried to Buy T-Mobile UK

France Telecom is reported to have made an offer to buy T-Mobile UK, but was rebuffed by T-Mobile's German parent company, Deutsche Telekom. The UK's Guardian newspaper also noted that Vodafone was rumoured to have offered to do a swap for its Turkish subsidiary, although the deal was denied by Vodafone.

Deutsche Telekom is reported to have been coming under pressure to sell the UK arm of T-Mobile due to ongoing poor performance at the mobile network. The German company's management, however, believe new UK chief executive Richard Moat should be given the time to resuscitate it, so as to avoid a fire sale.

In it's quarterly results, Deutsche Telekom wrote down by EUR 1.8 billion (US$2.4 billion) the valuation of T-Mobile UK - giving it a book value of around US$5.3 billion.

On the web: Guardian

Posted to the site on 31st May 2009