British Vodafone set to announce 130 bln dollars sales deal:reports

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British Vodafone set to announce 130 bln dollars sales deal:reports

(Xinhua) 20:46, September 02, 2013

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British telecoms giant Vodafone is expected to announce Monday a 130-billion US dollars deal on sales of its stake in a US wireless joint venture to partner Verizon, according to local reports.

According to the Financial Times, the two companies over the weekend finalized terms of an agreement for the 45 percent Verizon Wireless stake sales, and Vodafone's board held a meeting on Sunday and approved the deal, which is described as the third largest merger and acquisitions deal of all time.

Vodafone confirmed in a statement issued on Sunday that it was in advanced talks with Verizon Communications, the biggest mobile phone company in the US, "regarding the disposal of Vodafone's US group", but played down press reports that the deal was complete.

Verizon's board of directors will meet on Monday to finalize the terms of the agreement, which would give the US company full control after 13 years of shared ownership, according to the FT.

Vodafone will reveal Monday how much cash will be retained by the group and how much will be returned to investors.

Shareholders of the British telecoms firm are expected to receive a mix of share and cash estimated in the tens of billions, said the FT.

As the telecoms group is one of the most widely held stocks in the UK, the newspaper believed that the deal would help the British economic recovery in what has been labelled a "massive quantitative easing injection."

（Editor：WangXin、Hongyu）