Vodafone finally sells its stake in France’s SFR to Vivendi
Vodafone has finally sold its stake in France's SFR to Vivendi, which is paying almost 8 billion euros for the stake. This is also after Vodafone itself agreed to buy out its Indian partner for a considerable price.
Analysts said the price Vivendi paid for SFR was at the higher end of expectations, this seems to be the norm at the moment with the major telco's dropping shareholding stakes in assets they do not have controlling interest and return higher dividends to shareholders.
Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom both pledged multi-billion euro share buybacks after their deals, while Vivendi also signalled that the SFR buyout would lead to an increase in returns.
Vodafone has already sold its minority stake in China Mobile in addition to it stakes in Japanese carrier SoftBank and begun to offload 25% it owns of Poland's Polkomtel.
Vodafone still has a 45% holding in Verizon in the US and they could sell this stake or form a JV in the huge US market, as they are now cashed up and more streamlined anything is possible.
