The world's largest mobile operator, Vodafone Group, is testing its investors' nerves again, announcing it will take an impairment charge of between $40.2 billion and $49 billion and warned that revenue growth will slow during the next fiscal year. The charge comes mainly from its German operations following the company's takeover of rival Mannesmann in 2000, which it spent an unprecedented amount for, but the company said that operations in Italy and possibly Japan are also overvalued. Like many of its rivals in western Europe, Vodafone said increasing competition and pricing pressure would hurt revenue going forward. I'm sure we'll continue to see much more pressure put on CEO Arun Sarin to offload Vodafone's stake in Verizon Wireless. We'll see how long he holds out on that one.
For more about Vodafone's revised forecast:
- read this article from the AP