Possible BT takeover

A version of this story has circulated every five years or so since Privatisation. I have no real reason to believe that this one's fate wont be similar and fall gently aside. The only issue that is current is a flotation of Openreach on the markets with BT still holding a majority share of between 80 and 90 pct, the remainder being new shares which are likely to be snapped up by Vodafone and Comcast. I'm expecting that to drop before this financial year ends.

Any possibility of a hedge fund taking over is significantly reduced by the Chinese Government and it's agencies having their fingers in virtually all of these. The Huawei situation being critical in that judgement.

It'd be fascinating to see an attempt nevertheless.

Presumably the poster was referring to the current state of play, during the coronavirus situation (look it up). But as I said, that’s rather different.

The individual rail franchises *are* mostly state-owned... albeit by the German, Italian and Dutch states.

Getting the money together to do it wouldn't be an issue, the current government's ideology is a much bigger reason why it won't happen.

Also of course privitisation of the telephone network was in the manifesto of the Labour Party at the last election, and much derided by the current government

Oooh that's something I hadn't heard about, or hadn't even occurred to me, but makes sense.

So effectively it's just the open access operators that are currently still in totally private hands