Not to be confused with C&W Worldwide which was bought by Vodafone ages ago.
Virgin Media daddy Liberty Global swoops on Cable & Wireless Communications
Liberty Global – the owner of UK telco Virgin Media – has agreed to buy Caribbean-based operator Cable & Wireless Communications for £3.5bn ($5.3bn). The cash and stock deal extends Cable Cowboy John Malone's lasso into Latin America. CWC said that the buyout would "enhance customer benefits" and allow the business to grow as …
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Tuesday 17th November 2015 17:09 GMT Really Anonymous Coward
Re: Watershed indeed...
As others have said, the original Cable & Wireless split itself into CWW and CWC, the former was consumed by Vodafone pretty quick. Leaving CWC as the only company claiming succession to all the history.
So for more takeover mind-bending: CWC, which traded as LIME throughout the Caribbean, recently took over regional broadband/TV competitor Columbus Communications (trades as Flow), a major investor in which was ... John Malone.
It's currently rebranding all it's consumer services to Flow (possibly due to LIME's reputation), and was corporately rebranding as "C&W Communications", though the latter at least seems doubly redundant now!
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Wednesday 18th November 2015 12:22 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: The cable giant will...
... put up prices to pay off CWC's net debt of $2.7bn.
Actually, its worse than that. The debt they can just continue to service, but Liberty Global are paying $5.3bn for a company with net assets of a tad under $1.5bn, so that's $3.8bn of goodwill on Liberty Global's balance sheet. As a cash and stock deal LG have to incur the cost of capital/dividends on the acquisition price, and they need to amortise the goodwill (ie progressively write it down against profits). So the unlucky customers of C&W can indeed expect big price increases in return for nothing, and the total costs are a fair bit bigger than the C&W debt.
Virginmedia customers in the UK know what happens when the Cable Cowboy buys a company, having enjoyed years of 5hit deals, rubbish customer service, and inflation busting price rises.
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