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Vodafone’s CEO, Vittorio Colao, has seen better days as the company’s investors are pressuring him to “handle” the group’s underperforming European operations and extract cash from Verizon Wireless. According to The Financial Times’ report, Colao risks facing calls for Vodafone to be broken up if he does not close the gap between the carrier’s market capitalization and analysts’ “sum-of the-parts” valuations. One option is to separate Vodafone’s mature European business and its growing emerging markets division(s).
As for Verizon Wireless, Vodafone’s 45% stake in the company accounts for 37% of the group’s earnings but none of its cash flow. The reason is that Vodafone has not received a Verizon Wireless dividend since 2005 and is not expected to until at least 2012. On that note, Colao said that “solving the US” was his biggest issue and the company is regularly reviewing its position in Verizon Wireless. An option to sell the stake to Verizon Communications, which owns remaining 55%, is also on the table. Citi analysts value Vodafone’s stake at $44.5 billion…
[Via: GSMA]
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
