But there was an a quote in yesterday's Verizon conference call that was somewhat contrary to my prior opinion...
With respect to Vodafone, obviously, we made a public announcement on April 2, and I would reference all of you back to that announcement. Of course, as we've always said before, we are very interested in acquiring the 45% stake in Verizon Wireless that we don't already own. I will say, though, that there has been a lot of speculation about the tax consequences of a purchase of this 45%, and we are extremely confident that such a transaction could be accomplished in a manner that is very tax-efficient and would not result in a tax on the gain in that stake. So beyond that, I don't think there is really much else to say. So with that, I will pass it on to the next question.
2 comments:
It is worse than that. The tax-efficient structure may be to pay VOD with VZ stock (which is very overvalued relative to VOD). Then VOD could be the one to crush the VZ price by creating the world's biggest overhang -- _after_ the exchange ratio has been set.
Any reason VZ wouldn't just buy the whole thing using overvalued stock? VOD mgmt has done such an amazing job lowering expectations for the rest of the business, the only way is up for any successor.
Thoughts?
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