BT’s shareholders on Thursday gave their overwhelming backing to the telco’s planned takeover of EE at a general meeting in London.
The vote, which was widely viewed as a formality, saw 99.73% of those present come out in favour of the deal. As a result, the regulatory processes that will govern its completion can now get underway.
BT agreed to acquire EE for £12.5 billion in February, well over a decade after it sold off its former mobile business O2.
The deal will give the U.K. incumbent back a full presence in the U.K. mobile space. Indeed, it will lead the market, with EE serving around a third of U.K. mobile customers.
EE’s dominance is under threat as a result of Hutchison Whampoa’s move to acquire Telefonica’s O2, bringing together two of the market’s four mobile network operators.
As a result, that deal will doubtless face more regulatory scrutiny than the BT/EE tie-up. However, opponents of the BT/EE deal are making noise about how much market power the merged entity will have, something that regulators will certainly examine.
