Sept 2 (Reuters) – Elliott Investment Management has built a sizeable stake in Deutsche Telekom and indicated that the company should ditch a potential merger with T-Mobile US, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The activist investor wants the German telecom company to consider other ways to unlock shareholder value, including larger share buybacks, the report said.
The exact size of Elliott’s stake in Deutsche Telekom could not be determined, the report said.
T-Mobile, the company’s American arm, declined a Reuters request for comment, while Elliott and Deutsche Telekom did not immediately respond.
Reuters had reported in April that Deutsche Telekom is exploring a deal to combine with T-Mobile US and create a transatlantic telecoms giant in what would be the largest ever public merger.
Deutsche Telekom holds a nearly 54% stake in T-Mobile — its biggest earnings driver.
However, Semafor reported in July that T-Mobile’s US executives had told Deutsche Telekom that they no longer support a merger.
Deutsche Telekom, one of Europe’s largest telecommunications group with over 273 million mobile customers, has a market capitalization of $157 billion, below T-Mobile’s $200 billion.A deal would have created the world’s biggest wireless operator by market value, beating China Mobile.
Deutsche Telekom’s ties to T-Mobile date back around 25 years, with its ownership stake fluctuating over that period, although the German group has tightened its grip since 2020.
The German carrier’s chief executive Timotheus Hoettges told investors in February that the company was assessing ways to increase its stake in T-Mobile US.
(Reporting by Carlos Méndez in Mexico City and Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Joyjeet Das and Sahal Muhammed)
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