Telefónica Germany
Telefónica Germany GmbH & Co. OHG (; also called Telefónica Deutschland ) is a provider of broadband, landline and mobile telecommunications in Germany. The company trades as O2 (typeset as O2). The company was renamed from Telefónica O2 Germany to Telefónica Germany on 1 April 2011 following the completion of a merger with HanseNet. Telefónica Germany purchased E-Plus on 1 October 2014, unifying the business under O2 brand on 3 February 2016. Telefónica Germany's main competitors are Telekom Deutschland (Deutsche Telekom's German private customer unit) and Vodafone. History Telefónica Germany was founded in 1995 as Viag Interkom, as a joint venture between British Telecommunications (45%), VIAG (45%) and Telenor (10%). Viag Interkom was awarded Germany's second GSM-1800 (also known as E-Netz (de; lit. E-Network in Germany) license in February 1997 and began operations on 1 February 1998 in eight cities. In 2001, BT acquired VIAGs remaining shares for €11.4 billion, and the company was renamed BT Germany, it became a part of BT Wireless, a group of subsidiary companies owned by BT. BT Wireless demerged from BT in 2001 to form mmO2 plc and Viag Interkom was relaunched as O2 Germany. Since 2004, the so called Uptown Munich is O2's German headquarters. The 38-storey highrise is the tallest building in Munich, designed by architect Christoph Ingenhoven. In 2005, mmO2 plc. of which O2 Germany is a part, was acquired by Spanish telecoms giant, Telefónica. Telefónica additionally took over O2's subsidiaries in Great Britain and Ireland for a total of £17.7 billion as part of its expansion strategy into Europe. As a new subsidiary of Telefónica, Telefónica O2 Germany rebranded as Telefónica O2 Germany GmbH in 2008. In 2010, Telefónica O2 Germany merged with HanseNet. The merged company was renamed to Telefónica Germany. In a bid to boost revenues of up to €1.68 billion earmarked to flow into debt reduction, Telefónica announced its subsidiary, Telefónica O2 Germany, would be making an IPO (initial public offering). The IPO would involve the sale of a minority stake (23%) of the subsidiary on the 30 October, 2012, prior to which point they had proceeded through a change in legal form. Post IPO Following the transition, in March 2013, Telefónica Germany was incorporated into the TecDAX stock exchange index. In July of the same year, media reports stated that the company had proposed a merger with its rival, E-Plus, a German subsidiary of Royal KPN NV. The merger created the largest mobile phone provider in Germany in terms of network connections. The planned merger initially received resistance from a minority shareholder of E-Plus, America Movil SAB, but this was overcome in August 2013. In mid-2014, the European Commission approved the sale of Dutch telco provider KPN's German subsidiary, E-Plus, subject to certain requirements being met. These included the transfer of 30% of network capacity and certain assets among other assurances. In exchange, KPN received €8.6 billion (€5 billion of which was cash). In September 2014, Telefónica Germany announced the sale of €3.62 billion in new