BT 2010 Annual Report Download - page 42

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REVIEW OF THE YEAR OTHER INFORMATION
40 BT GROUP PLC ANNUAL REPORT & FORM 20-F
by the Rome Public Prosecutor. All the other defendants were also
acquitted. The Public Prosecutor has appealed the court’s decision.
The appeal was unsuccessful and no damages follow.
Acquisitions and disposals
We actively review our portfolio of assets and acquisition
opportunities in our target markets. We will consider acquiring
companies if they bring us skills, technology, geographic reach or
time-to-market advantage for new products and services.
2010
During 2010, there were no acquisitions.
In August 2009 BT transferred its consumer and SME broadband
and voice customer base in the Republic of Ireland to Vodafone,
and agreed to provide wholesale network services to underpin
Vodafone’s business over a seven-year period. We also completed a
number of other minor disposals in 2010.
Prior to 2010
The BT of today was largely created by a restructuring of the
company in the 2002 financial year. This restructuring involved a
rights issue (raising £5.9bn), the demerger of O2(comprising BT’s
wholly-owned mobile assets in Europe), the disposal of significant
non core businesses and assets, the unwinding of Concert (our joint
venture with AT&T), and the creation of customer-facing lines of
business.
During 2009, we completed a number of acquisitions,
including:
Wire One Holdings Inc (one of the leading providers of
videoconferencing solutions in the US)
Ufindus Ltd (one of the UK’s leading online business directories)
Ribbit Corporation (a Silicon Valley-based ‘Telco 2.0’ platform
company)
Stemmer GmbH and SND GmbH (two German companies
constituting the enterprise IT services segment of net AG, listed
on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange).
We also completed a number of other transactions in 2009,
including:
an agreement with Sekunjalo Investments Limited, under which
Sekunjalo became a 30% shareholder in BT’s South African
business
an extension of the geographic scope of our joint venture with
Enìa SpA in Parma, Italy, and an increase of our stake in the joint
venture from 55% to 59.5%
the acquisition of the remaining shares of Net2S SA, a publicly-
traded IT services company listed in France, other than certain
treasury shares and locked-up shares issued under employee
share plans (we had acquired over 91% of the outstanding issued
share capital of Net2S SA in 2008).