Iliad’s Free Italy wants to acquire Vodafone’s Italian subsidiary according to Bloomberg
The telecom operator group Iliad, founded and run by French billionaire Xavier Niel, has made a bid to acquire Vodafone Italy, although the Vodafone business is considerably larger. Iliad trades under the brand name Free in Italy and has since in entered the Italian market in 2018 has disrupted it, with low prices and innovative bundles.
Niel delisted Iliad last year to regain full control of the group, which he wants to build into a leading player in Europe.
Iliad’s Italian CEO Benedetto Levi has previously mooted that the French firm might buy a rival player. “If a company, as a whole or in part, becomes available on the market we will consider it without any preconception,” Levi told financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore.
It seems there is no official confirmation of Iliad’s offer to acquire Vodafone, nor any indication of what Iliad would be prepared to pay.
In January, Reuters reported Iliad and Vodafone were in talks to merge their Italian operations. Vodafone has 18 million mobile customers plus 3 million fixed broadband subcribers in Italy. Iliad has 8 million mobile customers and recently launched its own fixed broadband offer.
Their combined mobile customer base would give them about 36% of the market, which is in a state of flux with incumbent TIM fighting to stave off KKR’s bid to acquire a controlling share in the former state monopoly.
Vodafone Group meanwhile is under pressure from investors, particularly Cevian Capital, to improve its performance and its CEO, Nick Read has stated on several occasions his desire to streamline its opco portfolio by exploring mergers or acquisitions in the Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK.