Liberty Global

Liberty Global plc.
legal form	Public Limited Company
ISIN	GB00B8W67662
founding	2005
Seat	London , UK
management	Michael T. Fries, President and Chief Executive Officer
Number of employees	37,000 (Dec. 31, 2015)
sales	20 billion US dollars (2016)
Branch	Media, telecommunications
Website	www.libertyglobal.com

Liberty Global plc. based in London is an international media group and one of the largest broadband providers worldwide.

The company's shares trade on NASDAQ in the form of two tracking stocks , with Liberty Global Group containing European operations and Liberty Latin America and Caribbean Group (LiLAC) containing Latin America and the Caribbean operations .

history

Logo until June 18, 2012

The company emerged from a merger of Liberty Media International and UGC ( UnitedGlobalCom ). These are now 100 percent subsidiaries of Liberty Global. According to its own information, the group had almost 27 million customers in 14 countries at the end of September 2015. LMI boss John C. Malone acts as chairman , UGC boss Michael Fries as president and chief executive officer (CEO).

Malone is also CEO of the "Discovery Holding Company", which operates the Discovery Channel through its subsidiary Discovery Communications .

On October 24, 2005, Liberty Global Switzerland acquired all shares in “Cablecom Holdings AG”, the indirect parent company of the Swiss cable operator Cablecom, for around 2.8 billion Swiss francs . The company has been part of the Dutch UPC Broadband Holding since 2007 and has been operating under the name UPC Cablecom since the end of March 2011. Since May 25, 2016, UPC Cablecom has only been called UPC.

Since the end of 2007, Liberty Global has also been supplying Austria via the acquired UPC Telekabel .

Liberty Global also holds a 56.36% majority in the largest Belgian cable operator Telenet .

On November 13, 2009, Liberty Global announced the takeover of the German cable network operator Unitymedia for 3.5 billion euros. The purchase was completed on January 28, 2010 after approval by the German Federal Cartel Office . In March 2011, Kabel BW was purchased for 3.2 billion euros, which was finally completed in December 2011 when the cartel authorities gave the go-ahead. On June 19, 2012, Liberty Global made a relaunch and a. its logo to that of its UPC subsidiaries.

On February 5, 2013 it was announced that Liberty Global would like to buy Virgin Media from Virgin Group . Liberty Global is the largest broadband company in the world and the largest cable operator in the UK. The acquisition was completed on June 7, 2013.

With effect from May 1, 2013, the new group parent company named Liberty Global Corporation Ltd. based in London , which shortly thereafter became Liberty Global plc. renamed. The previous group parent company was Liberty Global, Inc., based in Englewood (Colorado) in the United States .

In 2014, the company also became the largest cable network operator in the Netherlands through the takeover of Ziggo . At the end of 2014, Ziggo was converted into a BV .

At the end of November 2014, it became known that the Vodafone Group was examining the complete takeover or the takeover of individual divisions of Liberty Global. On September 28, 2015, it was reported that the takeover talks had failed due to differing views on the value of the individual national companies.

On November 17, 2015 it was announced that Liberty Global plans to take over the British Cable & Wireless Communications .

On May 9, 2018, the Vodafone Group announced an agreement to take over the activities of Liberty Global Europe in Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania with a value of 18.4 billion euros. The approval of the competition authorities was granted on July 18, 2019.

On August 1, 2018, all Austrian UPC companies were taken over by T-Mobile Austria , the company was merged with T-Mobile Austria.

On August 12th, Liberty Global announced that it would take over Swiss Sunrise Communications .

backgrounds

Liberty Global owns shares in broadband distribution and content companies outside the United States, primarily in Europe, Asia and North, South and Central America. Through its offices and subsidiaries, Liberty Global is the largest broadband cable operator outside the United States in terms of subscriber numbers. Based on the company's key operating figures as of June 30, 2013 (excluding NTL Ireland, which is consolidated but not controlled), Liberty Global's network supplies approximately 24 million wired households and provides approximately 47.6 million individual services (RGUs). These include approx. 21.9 million TV customers, 13.9 million broadband Internet customers and 11.8 million telephony customers. Until it was partially sold, Liberty Global was represented in 13 countries in Europe as well as in Chile and Puerto Rico and was the largest cable network operator in the Netherlands , Poland , Switzerland , Spain , Belgium , Slovakia , Hungary and the Czech Republic . In order to be able to enforce the sale of Unitymedia in Germany to Vodafone with the competition authorities, a complete package was put together with the cable network operators in Romania , Hungary and the Czech Republic and offered for sale. Since a merger of the cable networks has not yet been approved at national level in Germany, the EU level was responsible. The approval of the competition authorities (anti-monopoly authorities) and the EU Commission for the merger and establishment of a monopoly was granted on July 18, 2019.

Tax saving model

Liberty expects to sell Unitymedia in 2019 with a plus of around 7.2 billion euros. According to Liberty, no tax payments are expected on this purchase price. Liberty has skimmed 3.8 billion euros from Unitymedia over a period of eight years. The purchase price at the time was 2.1 billion euros. In the same period, Unitymedia only paid a good 50 million euros in corporate taxes in Germany.
Research by SPIEGEL and the British organization Finance Uncovered has revealed the financing structures with which Liberty Global has succeeded in paying almost no German profit tax when transferring these billions. Multinational corporations can legally take advantage of the tax system by borrowing large amounts of money, giving themselves high distributions, and making huge capital gains. The highly profitable sale of Unitymedia to Vodafone was largely tax-free for Liberty.

Web links

• Liberty Global plc website.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Liberty Global plc .: Annual Report 2015. (PDF) Retrieved March 15, 2016 (English).  
2. ↑ finanzen.net .: Liberty Global A: Company key figures (in USD). Retrieved July 20, 2017 . 
3. ^ ^{A b} Liberty Global plc .: About Us. Retrieved March 15, 2016 . 
4. ^ Liberty Global plc .: Officers and Directors. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 14, 2013 ; Retrieved August 20, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ^ SEC Filing: Liberty Global, Form 10-K, Fiscal Year 2005 , pp. I-3
6. ^ Telenet: Investor Relations
7. ↑ Press Release: Liberty Global Introduces New Corporate Identity ( Memento of July 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 93 kB)
8. ^ Liberty Global plc .: Contact Us. Retrieved August 20, 2013 . 
9. ^ SEC: Notice of the formation of the new holding company. Retrieved August 20, 2013 . 
10. ↑ digitalfernsehen.de: Vodafone is examining merger with cable company Liberty Global
11. ↑ heise.de: Vodafone is apparently examining a merger with Liberty Global
12. ↑ Bloomberg.com: Vodafone Weighing Takeover of Malone's Liberty Global
13. ↑ handelsblatt.com: Vodafone is considering merger with Liberty Global
14. ^ The Register: Vodafone eyes up Liberty Global - report
15. ↑ Reuters: Vodafone UK examining options, Including a move for Liberty - sources
16. ↑ www.handelsblatt.com September 28, 2015: Vodafone deal with Liberty Global has burst
17. ↑ Liberty Global buys British Cable & Wireless Communications , November 17, 2015
18. ↑ heise online: Green light from Brussels: Vodafone is allowed to take over Unitymedia. Retrieved August 4, 2019 . 
19. ↑ derStandard.at: UPC takeover: The "T-Mobile" brand will disappear in 2019 . Article dated August 2, 2018, accessed August 2, 2018.
20. ^ Liberty Global acquires Swiss operator Sunrise for $ 7.4 billion. In: telecomstechnews.com. August 12, 2020, accessed on August 12, 2020 . 
21. ↑ http://www.internetdienstleistungen.eu/dienstleistungen/liberty-global/
22. ↑ https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Gruenes-Licht-aus-Bruessel-Vodafone-darf-Unitymedia-uebernehmen-4474398.html
23. ^ Liberty Global to Sell Operations in Germany, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic to Vodafone. Liberty Global, May 9, 2018, accessed May 9, 2018 . 
24. ↑ spiegel.de December 4, 2018: How to make billions with TV cables - almost tax-free
25. ↑ Liberty Global is said to have excluded Unitymedia. December 5, 2018, accessed December 30, 2018 .