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Technology Stocks : Vodafone-Airtouch (NYSE: VOD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrGreenJeans who wrote (3092)	3/6/2001 11:26:09 AM
From: MrGreenJeans	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3175

Vodafone eyes BT's Cegetel stake Jamie Doward Sunday March 4, 2001 The Observer Mobile phone giant Vodafone is eyeing BT's 26 per cent stake in French telecommunications firm Cegetel. Analysts valued the holding at £7 billion earlier this year, but it could now be worth much less after the stock market's slump and concerns over telecoms firms' rising debts. The former nationalised industry is being pushed to make disposals to cut its own £30bn debt mountain and it wants to sell its minority stakes in a number of Asian companies. A source familiar with Vodafone's thinking said Cegetel was one of the three 'areas of mutual interest' that the company shared with BT. The others are BT's stakes in Spanish mobile phone company Airtel and Japan Telecom, which Vodafone bought into last week. The source said the mobile phone firm was not involved in talks with BT about any of the three stakes, but things would change 'very quickly', providing the price was right. BT is under fire from institutional investors concerned at what they perceive as the company's lack of strategy. Larger shareholders have called for the resignations of the chief executive Sir Peter Bonfield and chairman, Sir Iain Vallance. Privately, several have said they would support a rights issue to offset BT's debt crisis only if the two men resigned. BT has publicly ruled out the prospect of an imminent rights issue, so it must now find alternative ways of paring down its debt. The company has until April to submit plans to credit rating agencies, or risk having its debt rating downgraded. The company plans to float 25 per cent of BT Wireless, its mobile phone division, later this year, but given the disappointing listing of Orange last month, investors may have lost their appetite for telecom stocks. BT's woes over the flotation of its subsidiary have been compounded by the fact that Deutsche Telekom and KPN Telecom of the Netherlands also plan to list their mobile phone divisions this year. A question mark also hangs over the flotation of Yell, BT's Yellow Pages arm. BT had originally planned to list 25 per cent of it, but a long- running review by the Office of Fair Trading has now prompted the company to explore other options. One possibility being considered by BT's new finance director, Philip Hampton, could be a full demerger of Yell.