TalkTalk To Be De-Merged From Carphone Warehouse

The Carphone Warehouse has confirmed that TalkTalk will be completely de-merged from the company by July 2010 – with the businesses likely to become two separate listed companies.

TalkTalk is currently the Carphone Warehouse’s UK home phone and broadband division. It delivers fixed line phone services to more than 3.9 million homes with 2.8 million of these also taking broadband.
It will become the UK’s second largest broadband supplier once its acquisition of the Tiscali UK broadband business is completed later this month.

The CEO of the Carphone Warehouse, Charles Dunstone, said, “It’s been increasingly obvious that the group is now two businesses – Best Buy Europe and TalkTalk Group. The one grew out of the other; but both have now reached the stage where there are no material synergies between them and where, for operational and competitive reasons, they need to operate independently. The businesses are effectively run as separate entities already, each with highly experienced and strong management teams.”

He continued, “The logic to demerge the two businesses and to give each shareholder a proportional direct interest in both is therefore clear. We have undertaken the necessary planning to confirm our view that this is in shareholder’s interests and to determine the practicable way of achieving the demerger process at the latest by July 2010.”

In related news Vodafone and the Carphone Warehouse have reconnected for the first time since 2006.

In 2006 the Carphone Warehouse stopped selling Vodafone contract mobile phones in its stores. Now customers will once again be able to buy Vodafone mobiles from the Carphone Warehouse.