Shareholders Approve GBP1bn Vodafone Takeover of Cable and Wireless

The shareholders of European communications provider Vodafone have voted 99% in favour of the £1.044 Billion deal (38p per share) to buy telecoms giant Cable & Wireless Worldwide (CWW), which gives the operator plenty of new capacity and room to grow both its existing fixed line and future mobile services.

At present CWW owns one of the UK’s largest networks of fibre optic business lines (20,000km+) and also supplies multiple ISPs with leased line and broadband (LLU) connectivity (e.g. Tesco). By comparison Vodafone has a somewhat shaky history in the country’s retail broadband market and last year even gave up on its own VodafoneAt Home service (here).

The gobbling up of CWW will thus allow Vodafone to cease its capacity reliance on BT, which should also help to cut costs, and allow it to keep pace with the rapidly growing demands for Mobile Broadband data. However it remains to be seen whether Vodafone will make any changes that negatively impact CWW’s existing customers.

A more complete summary of the original deal was posted during April 2012 (here). At the time one of CWW’s largest shareholders, Orbis Investment Management (19% stake), was still objecting but few supported such a stance. Orbis has now voted in favour.