back to article Vodafone, can you get a signal at the top of your $130bn Verizon cash pile?

Verizon will buy out its UK partner Vodafone from their US joint-venture Verizon Wireless for $130bn, as expected. But rather than pocketing or spending the cash after years of negotiations, Voda will hand most of it over to its shareholders and nothing at all to the UK taxman. The deal - one of the biggest in corporate …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. dave 81
    FAIL

    Nothing to the taxman?

    Um, No, the shareholder's will have to pay something,well, most of them.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nothing to the taxman?

      Most of them will have to pay 25% income tax on what get.

      Apparently, Labours 2002 finance act intentionally introduced the exemption for capitol gains for substantial shareholdings by companies. Nice one Gordon.

      1. Nick Kew

        Re: Nothing to the taxman?

        "Apparently, Labours 2002 finance act intentionally introduced the exemption for capitol gains for substantial shareholdings by companies. Nice one Gordon."

        I expect that was motivated by City folks wanting to be able to buy up a company, make it more profitable (whether by making genuine improvements or just a brief sugar-rush), then flog it for a profit.

        The fact a real business like Vodafone might also be covered is incidental.

        On the other hand, anyone who sells their house for a profit is getting a much bigger break[1] than that when they avoid Capital Gains Tax.

        [1] In proportion to their net worth, of course. Bear in mind that the number of people whose Vodafone shareholding is comparable to the value of their home is vanishingly small. Mine is just a few K, and is in a tax-avoidance scheme called a pension.

        1. asdf
          Trollface

          Re: Nothing to the taxman?

          Bah quit arguing. Of course anything have to do with shares is going to have no tax in most places and very low tax in others. Its the whole golden rule about those with gold (share owners) making the rules. They let the middle class in some of course but put all kinds of rules on the rift raft's pensions and mutual funds.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nothing to the taxman?

      *SIGH* You clearly got hung up on the "no tax" part. VODAFONE, a separate legal entity to its shareholders, does not have any tax liabilities (although Marge Hodge and her parliamentary luvvies are desperately looking for a way to make Vodafone pay something). Vodafone made that explicitly clear that THEY do not have any tax exposure, but also make it explicitly clear that their shareholders in the UK WILL.

      Read the damn article properly and learn about legal entities before going all whaa-whaa-whaa about tax liabilities.

      And yeah, downvote this already. You know you want to.

    3. Velv
      Go

      Re: Nothing to the taxman?

      Tax liabilities - depends on where the holding is held. If your Vodafone shares are in a Stocks And Shares ISA then the ISA rules should apply.

      HMRC: You don't pay any tax on the interest or dividends you receive from an ISA and any profits from investments are free of Capital Gains Tax.

      And an ISA can contain Stocks from any "recognised stock exchange", which would cover Verizon shares (although if you read the full press release, Vodafone have also insisted Verizon provide access for shareholders with <50,000 Vodafone shares to convert the element to cash).

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Signal up there?

    I very much doubt it. Sure there's not many places you can get a useful vodafone signal these days.

  3. Electric Panda
    FAIL

    They could invest in their network, that might be a nice idea. I'm doing well to get 4 bars on Vodafone pretty much everywhere I go, and most of the time there's barely a flicker from the 3G. It'll show up "3G" on my phone, but there's either no data transfer or it's molasses slow. If you can't get this right, then forget 4G because I don't hold out any hope of it being better.

    Unfortunately our corporate plans are Vodafone, but I'm told this is soon to change partly for the reasons I've mentioned. My colleagues all have the same or similar issues across a variety of handsets and locations, corollary is that Vodafone are pants.

    1. asdf

      Well they probably share crap customer service but Verizon in the US has about the best 3 and 4 G coverage (of course high prices and draconian caps though) and they really do have the best network in most places. Probably why they wanted to separate.

  4. damian Kelly

    Excellent, another one of my shares exceeds appl :-)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Vodafone gone...

    Only T-Mobile to go.

    Then that will be the last of those pesky European owners out of the US mobile phone networks.

    And then, the entire mobile phone system gets sucked into Prism.

  6. and-job

    Verizon Wireless customers will be the losers

    Someone is going to have to pay for their purchase, it's the customers that will be the ones that had plans that were grandfathered in that are cheaper than that 'share everything' plan that will suddenly get notices that the plans will terminate as the contract expires.

    AT&T pulled a similiar thing but that was purely to increase their profits at the expense of the customers that actually made use of the unlimited data.

    I know that it is in the offing. This year I have had on average 10 emails a month telling me that I would be far better off switching to Shared plan from my grandfathered unlimited data and that I really need to be paying about $125 including taxes rather than the $84 I currently pay.

    I am sure I am not the only person on grandfathered in plans that gets more Verizon wireless emails of this nature than any other form of email from Verizon Wireless.

    Could be the time that I part ways with Verizon. Their service is not that great where I live anyway. They boast LTE but it's only usable if I drive to the top of one of the hills in the area to use it. Closer to home it's barely as fast as very slow dial up.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like