Vodafone to hold on to Verizon stake?
updated 03:05 pm EDT, Tue August 7, 2007
Vodafone to keep Verizon?
The cellular carrier Vodafone is likely to decide, later this week, to keep its investments in America's Verizon Wireless, says an anonymous source cited by Reuters. Vodafone had been considering selling as much as $10 billion of its stake in Verizon, the total of which amounts to $45 billion. This is due to pressure from Vodafone shareholders, who have noted that the value of Verizon is not reflected in the former's share price, and that dividend payments will not be reinstated until 2009.
At one stage a shareholder called Efficient Capital Structures had been pressuring Vodafone to create a new company based on the Verizon stake, and the Financial Times had once suggested that Vodafone would expand its stake to total control. Both of these possibilites have been discounted.
