Article by Simon Lamb and Philip Shephard, PricewaterhouseCoopers
Over the last couple of years, major communications companies have rationalized their portfolios, strengthened the ownership of their separate operations, and increased their footprint overseas. In the United States, in particular, there has been a substantial round of domestic consolidation, including mega deals such as the US$39 billion acquisition of Nextel by Sprint and the $73 billion acquisition of BellSouth by AT&T. In Europe, the volume of communications deals in 2005 and 2006 remained stable, with 447 and 422 transactions, respectively.
Those figures fall short of the volume at the market peak in 2000, when nearly 900 transactions involving European businesses were recorded. But deal values in Europe have seen a strong recovery, hitting more than €100 billion in both 2005 and 2006 compared with a low of €36 billion in 2004. In 2005, substantial individual deals included the €6 billion-plus acquisitions of
