Apollo gatecrashes easyJet sale with surprise £5.7bn takeover offer - business live

French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel has become Vodafone’s largest shareholder after buying a 16.21% stake for £4.4bn.

On Friday, Emirati telecoms group e&, which first took a stake in Vodafone in 2022, announced the sale of its entire shareholding for 112.5p a share.

Niel, who founded the telecoms company Iliad, has bought the stake through investment vehicle Vega at a 15% premium to Vodafone’s share price on Thursday.

The 59-year old, who has built telecoms businesses in France, Italy, Poland and Iceland, first took a 2.5% stake in Vodafone in 2022.

Niel, who is estimated to be worth $15.5bn by Forbes, has been the partner of Delphine Arnault, the daughter of France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, for more than a decade.

His other business interests include French newspaper Le Monde, which he saved from bankruptcy, although two years ago he sold almost all of his shares for €1 to the Fund for Press Independence in a restructure to safeguard the independence of the publication.

The sudden appearance of Apollo on the scene follows multiple rounds of talks between easyJet and Castlelake. EasyJet had told investors earlier this week that it had reached an agreement in principle with the firm at £6.90 per share.

EasyJet management’s operational and commercial ambitions can be substantially accelerated via the access to incremental capital and longer-term business and strategic planning that a private company setting affords.