Competition for telecom capital in Europe may be Werce, but Vodafone has taken the massive funding required to turn itself into Europe's pre-eminent mobile phone service provider in its stride with a series of jaw-dropping deals. Following a $14 billion bank Wnancing to support its acquisition of AirTouch, it stunned the markets in December by raising a total of e30 billion in the loan markets in the middle of its hostile takeover of Germany's Mannesmann. Not only did Vodafone executives face convincing their own shareholders and Mannesmann's reluctant shareholders to accept the takeover deal, they also had to bring in new and existing investors.
At e30 billion, Vodafone's loan backing the Mannesmann takeover was the largest ever syndicated loan. Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank and Goldman Sachs ran the global books for the three-tranche deal, which was arranged with seven other banks: ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, Greenwich NatWest, ING Barings, National Australia Bank, Toronto-Dominion and Warburg Dillon Read.
Hard on the heels of the syndicated loan, Vodafone came back to the market with a $5.2 billion bond issue. The deal was not only launched on the very day Mannesman's board capitulated and recommended the Vodafone bid to shareholders (February 4 2000), it also set a new high as the largest deal ever for a UK corporate.