Vodafone's hostile takeover of Mannesmann

In November 1999, Britain's Vodafone AirTouch launched an unsolicited, all-share bid for Mannesmann, a German industrial and telecoms conglomerate — an approach almost unheard of in Germany's consensus-driven corporate culture, where hostile takeovers of major companies simply did not happen. After months of public resistance from Mannesmann's board and German political figures, the two sides reached agreement in February 2000: Mannesmann shareholders received Vodafone shares giving them roughly 49.5% of the combined company, valuing the deal at close to $183 billion (about €190 billion), the largest corporate merger completed to that point. The combination created the world's largest mobile-phone operator by subscribers, spanning Britain, Germany, Italy, France and the United States. The deal proved a poor one financially: Vodafone was later forced to write off billions of dollars in acquired goodwill, and its earnings per share swung from positive territory in 1999 to sharply negative by 2002, a cautionary tale often cited about overpaying at the peak of a boom.