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*Want to sell.
Altice USA at the point of float was valued at $15b, with a shareprice of $30. Since then, the share price has fallen to $11 giving market cap at $5.3b. Reading the recents posts Patrick wasn’t s to sell a company valued at $5b for $20b. I hope he applies the same rationale to purchasing BT by offering 3x the market capital valuation, so offering 3x 175p on the share price.
Snowball Dave Ward might want to kill the Golden Goose, 4 legs good, 2 legs bad!!
Smasher you keep harping on about the 32%. This is incorrect, and in many news paper articles they are sensationalised and over played and are based on a small shred of truth but wouldn’t stand up in court.
I’m afraid you have stumbled upon some sensationalist news from the CWU and red tops.
Phil Jansens total enumeration for
2019-20 was £3.2m
2020-21 was £2.6m after he donated £650k to charity
2021-22 was £3.2m
There was no pay increase of 32%, only a delta from one year to the next due to his very decent nature. I hope this puts the record straight.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-9627211/IN-MONEY-BT-chief-exec-Philip-Jansen-saw-pay-fall-year.html
“ But his interest has sparked widespread speculation that he may still launch an £18billion takeover of the national asset, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange. ”
So is that an additional £18b on top of what he has spent, to acquire the remaining 82% of BT. If so, are we to expect an opening bid of 220p. I hope not!
Having read all the input from platform members, I can't believe VM02 buying TT for £3b to have caused a 15p drop. TT was only worth £1b only a couple of years ago. So if this is the reason then the sp for BT should have increased marginally as VM02 have been pushed over a barrel in paying too much. Strange times. Maybe it’s something else, maybe Drahi has been doing a Elon Musk/Twitter tantrum, and making waves in threatening to walk.
Guys, I’ve popped out for a few beers today and am reading this now, what happen today in a sentence or two.
Cheers.
Rod, your word not mine, old bean. Hate, is such a strong word, but I do believe I used the word dislike. But I'm struggling to remember the last positive/neutral news story the DT did report about BT.
Telecom bosses are already under intense Government pressure to help buffer the cost of living crunch yet next year’s annual broadband price rise is baked into City forecasts. Clearly it is impossible to predict where inflation will be by then but it is unlikely to be back under the Bank of England’s 2pc target and people will be feeling even poorer then than they are now so it is hard to see how BT gets away with it again.
On the contrary, whoever ends up in Number 10 cannot allow it to. Consumers and workers should not be subsidising BT's failures elsewhere.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/07/15/no-way-bt-can-get-away-another-10pc-price-rise/
Management claims the raise would be the highest that workers have been awarded in 20 years. In a recent video call with employees, Jansen declared that he would “like to do more” but claimed the company can’t afford to as it grapples with its own spiralling energy bills, alongside a mountain of other major costs including investment in fiber optic lines, taxes, dividends, interest payments on nearly £20bn of borrowings, plus a cavernous pension deficit.
The CWU rejected the proposal and in typically combative fashion described the virtual meeting as “a complete embarrassment”. It wants a deal that keeps pace with inflation, and has repeatedly contrasted the offer with Jansen’s own generous pay package.
The union says “it is no surprise” that someone so well-remunerated “isn’t in touch with working people”. It’s an unsophisticated line of attack, but that won’t stop it resonating with members who have experienced a pay cut in real terms, while Jansen has been seen his total wage packet jump by a third this year to £3.2m, meaning he earns 86 times average pay levels, the CWU has calculated.
At the same time, customer bills have shot up. Every year the company puts up broadband prices by 3.9pc plus inflation but with inflation running at 40-year highs, its most recent hike came in at nearly 10pc.
Consumer groups labelled the move a “tax on working from home” while Julian Knight, the Tory chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee, said BT risked stoking an “inflationary spiral” in which other broadband providers jacked up their prices.
It is a prop for BT’s historically lacklustre share price. Jansen and his potential successor Marc Allera have got the consumer arm motoring and a recent ruling from Ofcom that allows greater margins to be made on fibre broadband than older copper wires means that Openreach is regaining its shine as BT's jewel in the crown.
Yet, BT’s business-to-business divisions continue to struggle. Turnover at both the Global Services arm, which provides telecoms to some of the world's biggest companies, and the enterprise unit, which provides internet services to smaller firms, have been going backwards for years. Now, more nimble rivals are picking off customers with better pricing.
Jansen is aware that this is a problem. Indeed, he came close to offloading the global services offshoot to private equity early in his tenure but the deal fell through, this newspaper understands.
Having looked for a moment as though it could finally get on with the gargantuan task of upgrading the nation’s broadband, BT is firmly back in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.
Gather all the negative spiel the DT has been reporting for years and add in the CWUs threat of strike action for a relative decent pay award the best in 20years, and voila, you have top story ready to regurgitate in the business section. Since when does the DT sympathise with unions. So this leads to one major question who does the DT dislike most BT or Unions.
There is no way BT can get away with another 10pc price rise.
Running BT must be among the toughest jobs in corporate Britain.
been nearly forty years since Margaret Thatcher’s Government privatised Britain’s primitive telephone service. Yet the dead hand of state ownership looms large, meaning much-needed reform has at times been snail-like. The company is also weighed down with the largest private sector pension fund in the country, hampering its ability to invest.
Meanwhile, it must contend with the unwanted scrutiny of French billionaire and now BT’s largest shareholder Patrick Drahi. Speculation about the corporate raider’s true intentions have been a terrible distraction at a time when it should be laser-focused on fulfilling a pledge to regulators and Government to carpet the country with full-fibre broadband after years of prevaricating.
However, the latest crisis threatening to engulf Britain’s national telecoms champion feels like it could have been avoided had boss Philip Jansen tackled BT’s most intractable legacy issues with greater verve.
Having failed to properly address some long-standing strategic problems, the company is wide open to accusations that it has effectively chosen to prop itself up through excessive price rises and an unfair squeeze on hard-up workers instead.
First up is the prospect of a spectacular dispute with the Communications Workers Union that is expected to trigger the first nationwide strike at BT for 35 years.
With CWU accusing Jansen of refusing further negotiations, the union is preparing to call on 40,000 members to stage a dramatic walk out, raising grave concerns about BT's ability to continue handling 999 emergency calls.
This is a disastrous situation for BT to suddenly find itself in, far more serious than second guessing what deal-junkie Drahi is really up to now that the days of cheap money have come to a juddering halt, and ministers have made it clear any bid for the company would be blocked.
In keeping with the times, the row centres around what constitutes a fair and reasonable pay rise for workers at a time when households are experiencing the biggest squeeze for forty years.
BT has made what it considers to be, not entirely unreasonably it has to be said, a fair offer of a flat £1,500 annual jump for 58,000 front line employees that would be backdated to April 1st. It says this equates to increases of 8pc for the lowest paid workers and around 3pc for those who are higher paid.
Yes indeed Rod, if there were no rumblings of a realistic takeover versus a very real imminent bid, then the Gov wouldn’t be this involved until they needed to be. There is definitely something going on.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/security-review-into-french-interest-in-bt-delayed-360wgjkvx
Answers a few of our contemporary questions. Another 45 days of speculation……
The result of a national security review into the French billionaire Patrick Drahi’s stake-building in BT has been delayed as the government requests more information about the deal. It had been expected last week.
Drahi, 58, the French owner of the auctioneer Sotheby’s, owns 18 per cent of BT through Altice UK, a Luxembourg-based vehicle. He revealed a 12.1 per cent position in BT last June and a further increase in December, acquiring voting rights over an additional £1 billion of shares. Any decision could lead to the stake being unwound or conditions put on his ownership.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, called in the deal for further scrutiny on May 25 under the National Security and Investment Act which aims “to combat the risk to our shared security from hostile investment”.
The new laws, which came into force in January, trigger a compulsory referral process for deals in certain sectors, such as data infrastructure.
Initial reviews are 30 working days, with the potential to extend it for an extra 45 where necessary. However, this timeframe can be paused if the government needs to request further information, as has happened in this case.
A government spokesman would not confirm the details of any revised time frame, but said “the government routinely monitors acquisitions across the economy in case of national security concerns. The business secretary has powers under the National Security & Investment Act to intervene in acquisitions where necessary”.
Drahi said in May that he did not intend to make an offer for BT and that he had “engaged constructively with the board and management of BT in recent months”. The secretive businessman is said to be worth £5.3 billion, having made his fortune in the telecoms sector.
BT would not comment on the news.
There are 14 deals being examined by the government. They include the acquisition of Newport Wafer Fab, Britain’s biggest microchip factory, by Nexperia, a subsidiary of Wingtech Technology, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer. This investigation was extended by a further 45 days last week.
Experts say the delays in the reviews are not surprising, given these deals are the first to be scrutinised under the new legislation.
X Div 4th Aug, Magic.
Payment 12th Sep.
Tim, Shazza is doing a Sterling job at JLP, long may she stay there, as she has a clear mission on making them into the new Barratt/Persimmon.
Rod,
“ What is the process/timetable?
The ISU within BEIS deals with notifications. They will conduct an initial review within 30 working days of notification, after which the transaction will either be cleared or called-in for a full national security assessment. A full assessment will itself take up to 30 working days, subject to an initial extension of 45 working days, and further potential voluntary extension if agreed with the parties. The clock can be stopped on the review during a full assessment if further information is required.”
I take your point Rod, is it an additional 15 days to make 45, or an additional 45 totalling 75 days.
No totally clear
https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/c8b20a65/the-uks-new-nsi-regime-what-do-you-need-to-know
Unless a decision was made a week ago and awaiting publication, I’d expect the 45 day extension to be invoked. And then shot down.
Bertie, I have Halo, BT Sport and Sky all for less than £81, granted I have to give all the 18 month call to maintain best price, so not sure how the £81 monthly price stacks up, especially against Plusnet where you say it’s priced at £33 and on the website costs £24.99 for unlimited fibre extra, the priciest service of the 3 services.