The news was first broken by the Financial Times, which speculated that Verizon and AT&T could be set to pay up to 260p a share, at a premium of 40% from Vodafone’s trading price yesterday.
Vodafone shares rose by as much as 6%, and put them on track to reach its highest close since November 2007.
Other European telecoms stocks, including those in France Telecom, Telecom Italia and Deutsche Telekom also saw a sharp increase.
If AT&T and Verizon were pay the speculated price per share, Vodafone’s enterprise value would stand at $245 billion and any potential tie up would be the biggest M&A deal on record.
Analysts have however come out and rejected that any such deal is possible, with market watchers claiming Verizon have consistently claimed it is not interested in European assets.
