Opus Broadband reportedly retreats from bid for UK consumer ISP TalkTalk

A new report claims that Opus Broadband, which was previously reported to have been working alongside investment firm Alchemy Partners on a potential bid for TalkTalk’s debt-strained consumer business, has decided not to pursue a bid for the ISP after an exclusivity period elapsed. Instead Ares Management may be looking to take long-term ownership of the business.

Regular readers may recall that Ares has already made a series of massive debt-financing interventions over the past few years to help keep the struggling UK telecoms provider afloat. The most recent example of this occurred in March 2026, when a further £115m was injected into the TalkTalk group (£65m in new senior debt and a short-term facility of £50m).

According to Sky News, the alleged decision by Opus not pursue a c.£250m bid, as well as the seeming absence of any other serious bids (Vodafone has not been mentioned for a while), has resulted Ares potentially moving to take long-term ownership of the business, with TalkTalk’s founder Sir Charles Dunstone expected to hold an advisory role. Ares is already TalkTalk’s biggest lender and a minority shareholder, but not its outright long-term owner.

In theory such a move could see Ares convert a portion of the massive debt they are owed by TalkTalk into direct equity (ownership shares), which would clean up the balance sheet. Such a move would mark a strategy of stabilisation and restructuring, one that seems likely to be followed by another attempt to sell the consumer business, once market conditions improve.

However, Sky’s report claims that TalkTalk is still engaged in some talks with Opus, although sources close to Opus recently informed ISPreview that they would not be buying the provider. Meanwhile the group is separately still trying to reach a deal to offload its wholesale business – PlatformX Communications (formerly Talk Talk Wholesale) – to Octopus Investments, which controls broadband infrastructure group Fern Trading.

The Telegraph reported on Thursday this week that Octopus and TalkTalk had issued a joint statement, which said they were “optimistic of delivering the proposed transaction“. TalkTalk’s consumer business is strongly linked to PXC’s wholesale products, thus any deal for one side of the business or the other would require some agreement on how that relationship continues into the future.

We should add that Fern Trading also backs wholesale fibre aggregation business AllPoints Fibre Networks (APFN) and London-focused business ISP Vorboss.