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Agree Nige. If I say, I am not going to buy this house (today) that doesn’t stop me buying it tomorrow. As you say if not a shareholder then I don’t see that any rules apply…
Yes that is a good point Wetherboy. All eye's on Drahi I guess.
But they only have to wait until someone else bids then they can pile in too.
"Nige..... Stock exchange rules, if you've publicly said you won't bid you are not allowed to change your mind for six months , Drahi is under the same prohibition until 10 Dec."
Casapinos, thanks for your reply mate, yes I can understand why Drahi is banned being a shareholder, but with Ambani not being a BT shareholder, I wouldn't have thought that his comments would result in a six month ban.
Nige..... Stock exchange rules, if you've publicly said you won't bid you are not allowed to change your mind for six months , Drahi is under the same prohibition until 10 Dec.
"And while Ambani is now barred from bidding for six months under Takeover Panel rules, he can’t be ruled out in the long-term."
I'm not sure why Ambani would be banned from bidding for the next six months?
I think Fleccy might have written this bit:
Still, it’s a myopic view. Yes, the upfront costs are vast but investors need to take a five to 10-year view. As more fibre is rolled out, the costs for repairs go down, margins will expand, dividends get bigger, and shareholders will get their rewards.
No worries Arees, you can only smack a piñata so many times before the candy appears.
Thanks for posting. The telegraph over the last couple of months abeit by diffeent jourlists has written negatively about BT and put a positive spin on Virgin and the like, laughable really!
“Whether it's Asia’s richest person or a serial dealmaker like Drahi, the stock market's failure once again to properly value a British company, has left the door wide open to an opportunistic approach.”
Preaching to the converted, alleluia, praise the lord.
Cont…..
Yet if anything, a more favourable regulatory environment has strengthened BT’s hand, not weakened it, and no one will ever be able to build another BT, regardless of how much money they throw at it. It is simply impossible to compete with the company’s vast infrastructure.
The contrast between the view of short-term institutional shareholders and the heavyweights of the global telecoms industry is stark.
Admittedly no one knows the what the intentions of either Deutsche Telecom, with a 12.06pc slice of BT, is, or that of Drahi’s Altice with a 12.1pc stake – but it is telling that while the City gets cold feet, BT now has two major strategic investors willing to back its ambitious plans.
And while Ambani is now barred from bidding for six months under Takeover Panel rules, he can’t be ruled out in the long-term. He has global aspirations and with a fortune estimated at $90bn, the wealth to match. But if not Asia’s richest person, then BT is still highly vulnerable while its shares trade so cheaply.
So if the stock market can’t support Britain’s flagship telecoms provider in its quest to build the broadband network of tomorrow, then perhaps it’s time to ask a fundamental question: what’s the point of the stock market at all?
Decline of the stock market has made BT a plaything for international billionaires.
Short-termist shareholders are to blame for telecoms giant's vulnerability to a foreign takeover.
If the BT board is worried about the prospect of an unwanted takeover bid from French deal junkie Patrick Drahi, one can only imagine what it makes of India’s richest man entering the fray. Drahi is a scary prospect, but Mukesh Ambani is a terrifying one, as Vodafone discovered to its great cost.
The company squandered an estimated €20bn trying to go toe-to-toe with the powerful industrialist in India, only to warn last year that its India venture was staring bankruptcy in the face.
Though Ambani's Reliance Industries was quick to issue a firm denial of takeover interest in BT, following a report in India’s Economic Times, the shares remained 6pc higher than where they had opened.
That’s because BT, despite the Government taking a firmer stance on foreign takeovers, is seen as highly vulnerable to an unwanted bid. Whether it's Asia’s richest person or a serial dealmaker like Drahi, the stock market's failure once again to properly value a British company, has left the door wide open to an opportunistic approach.
Though the share price is up 20pc this year, at 163p it is still less than half where it was five years ago, and just two thirds of 2015 levels. Earlier in the year BT’s stock market value had shrunk to not much more than £12.5bn, the price it paid to takeover mobile operator EE in 2016.
The sharp sell-off has been prompted by concerns over the huge costs associated with BT’s plan to upgrade 25m homes and businesses to full-fibre broadband by 2026. The bill for the vast building programme is expected to total £15bn.
Still, it’s a myopic view. Yes, the upfront costs are vast but investors need to take a five to 10-year view. As more fibre is rolled out, the costs for repairs go down, margins will expand, dividends get bigger, and shareholders will get their rewards.
And if the UK’s army of highly paid fund managers isn’t willing to invest in this country’s future infrastructure then perhaps we can't complain if an overseas buyer steps in.
It is even more short-sighted when you consider the eye-watering sums of money that investors have been prepared to throw at a new generation of challenger networks it was believed might break the stranglehold of BT’s infrastructure arm Openreach.
Over the past decade billions of pounds of pension fund, sovereign wealth and private equity money has been poured into a rash of so-called “alt-nets” on crazy valuations.
Mukesh Ambani net worth is only 91.8 billion USD
Does anyone have full transcript
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/11/29/decline-stock-market-has-made-bt-plaything-international-billionaires/