{"id":1020051,"date":"2026-07-11T07:50:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/?p=1020051"},"modified":"2026-07-11T07:57:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T02:27:00","slug":"french-tycoon-niel-becomes-vodafones-top-shareholder-in-6-billion-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/2026\/07\/11\/french-tycoon-niel-becomes-vodafones-top-shareholder-in-6-billion-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"French tycoon Niel becomes Vodafone&#8217;s top shareholder in $6 billion deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PARIS\/DUBAI: French billionaire Xavier Niel is set to become Vodafone Group&#8217;s largest shareholder, after UAE telecoms group e&amp; agreed to sell its entire stake in the British telecoms group for almost $6 billion. <\/p>\n<p>The deal gives one of Europe&#8217;s most active telecoms dealmakers, who has long championed consolidation in its fragmented industry, the largest stake in Britain&#8217;s biggest mobile operator. Niel, 58, approached e&amp; directly after spotting an opportunity to build a large position in \u200cVodafone at what he \u2060saw as \u2060an attractive valuation following a share price decline, and the transaction was agreed within days, a person familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PARIS\/DUBAI: French billionaire Xavier Niel is set to become Vodafone Group&#8217;s largest shareholder, after UAE telecoms group e&amp; agreed to sell its entire stake in the British telecoms group for almost $6 billion. The deal gives one of Europe&#8217;s most active telecoms dealmakers, who has long championed consolidation in its fragmented industry, the largest stake in Britain&#8217;s biggest mobile operator. Niel, 58, approached e&amp; directly after spotting an opportunity to build a large position in \u200cVodafone at what he \u2060saw as \u2060an attractive valuation following a share price decline, and the transaction was agreed within days, a person familiar with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,60,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1020051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers","category-telecom-the-economic-times","category-the-economic-times"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1020051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1020065,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1020051\/revisions\/1020065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1020051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1020051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1020051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}