UAE's e& exits Vodafone in a $5.95 billion sale to Niel's Vega

Published: 2026-07-12T11:27:00.000Z

The UAE's e& has decided that its four-year adventure as a major Vodafone shareholder is over, agreeing to sell its entire stake for 5.95 billion dollars to Vega, an acquisition vehicle owned by the family of French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel.

The UAE's e& has decided that its four-year adventure as a major Vodafone shareholder is over, agreeing to sell its entire stake for 5.95 billion dollars. Announced on 10 July, the deal hands the Abu Dhabi group's roughly 16.21 per cent holding, which carries about 17.13 per cent of Vodafone's voting rights, to Vega, an acquisition vehicle wholly owned by the family of the French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel. The shares are priced at 112.5 pence each, a premium of around 13 to 14 per cent over Vodafone's closing price the day before, made up of cash plus the British company's final dividend for the year, and the market liked it enough to send Vodafone stock up more than 12 per cent in London. For e&, this is a tidy exit from a position it began building at a difficult moment. Formerly known as Etisalat, the group first bought a 9.8 per cent slice for 4.4 billion dollars in early 2022 during pandemic-era market dislocation, then steadily raised it above 16 per cent. Crystallizing the investment now delivers a net cash return of about 1.3 billion dollars and, more importantly, frees up considerable firepower. The company has been openly reshaping itself from a traditional telecoms operator into a global technology and investment group, pouring resources into digital services, AI, sovereign cloud, data centers and enterprise solutions across its 38 markets, and 5.95 billion dollars in cash gives it room to accelerate that pivot. The move also draws a clean line under the relationship. e& has terminated the formal agreement that governed its engagement with Vodafone, and its group chief executive Hatem Dowidar has stepped down as a non-executive director with immediate effect. To manage the handover, the shares will first pass through off-market block trades to three financial institutions that will hold them until Vega clears the regulatory approvals needed across multiple jurisdictions. On the other side, Niel becomes Vodafone's largest individual shareholder, extending a long fascination with the company after two rebuffed attempts to buy its Italian arm, though Vega has been careful to say it has no intention of launching a full takeover. The regional read is that this is portfolio discipline rather than retreat. Gulf telecoms groups spent years accumulating trophy stakes in European operators, and e&'s reversal, coming shortly after it sold Careem shares to Uber, suggests a sharper focus on assets it can actually control and integrate into its technology ambitions. It fits a wider pattern in which UAE and Saudi champions increasingly favor AI, cloud and sovereign infrastructure over passive minority holdings abroad. For a region intent on building its own digital economy, recycling billions out of a European telco and into homegrown capability looks like exactly the sort of trade the Gulf now prefers.