O2 stock offer

Ordinary investors who have a mobile phone contract with O2 are likely to be given an opportunity to buy into a £10bn listing of the business on the London Stock Exchange, says The Sunday Telegraph. Earlier this year, a £10.3bn sale of the UK mobile network to Three owner Hutchison was blocked by the European Commission on competition grounds. But O2’s Spanish owner Téléfonica is still under pressure to cut its huge debt pile – so offloading O2, at least in part, remains on the cards. Mark Evans, chief executive of Téléfonica UK, said the option of floating remained “a front runner” – in fact, he said it will “take something quite incredible to knock us off that trajectory”, as it’s the best way to get the valuation for the deal closer to the amount Three was prepared to pay.

Evans said there was “real attraction to some form of retail offer to make sure the shares are available to as many people as are interested”. It is understood this would take the form of an offer through intermediaries to customers, rather than to the wider market. It could still “be as popular as any privatisation”, Justin Urquhart Stewart of broker 7IM told The Times, as long as it were “marketed effectively” and not priced “greedily”. This would also provide an opportunity to reward customer loyalty – but could hurt O2’s hopes of achieving that bumper valuation. Some experts have suggested “a value closer to £9bn”.