BT Group Moots £200 Million Sale of UK Fleet Division

A new report from Sky News is claiming that BT has appointed investment bank Lazard to oversee the possible £200m+ sale of their BT Fleet division, which owns and manages many of the vehicles used by Openreach and various other companies including the AA, EDF and National Grid etc.

At present BT Fleet owns 65 of its own garages (plus 500+ approved partner garages) and 33,000 of its own vehicles (out of 120,000 vehicles that they maintain). Most of the vehicles that BT owns are essential for their Openreach engineers and as such Sky News states that any disposal is likely to include a leaseback arrangement, so as not to disrupt the on-going work of their broadband engineers.

Apparently work on such an auction is still in the early stages and may complement their on-going efforts to sell off BT’s scandal hit Italian division (here). All of this follows new rumblings in the market, which have separately alleged that Deutsche Telekom (they’ve held a modest stake in BT Group since the EE merger) could be preparing a “mammoth takeover bid” for the operator.

Admittedly we’ve lost track of the amount of times that DT have been linked with a possible takeover bid for BT Group over the years, although if they do plan to make a serious offer then it will almost certainly occur after a Brexit deal has been agreed (assuming that happens).

DT’s CEO, Tim Höttges, has made no secret of the fact that he finds the company “very attractive” but due to the EE merger the company cannot sell its shares or buy more until the beginning of 2019. Lest we forget that BT will from early next year also get a new CEO, Philip Jansen, who could conceivably take the operator in a new direction (here).

Hopefully BT remembers to keep something more than just the kitchen sink under its ownership. We have asked for a comment, but so far none have been received.