LONDON : Vodafone and CK Hutchison, the owner of Three UK, have accelerated talks about a deal to combine their British operations, Sky News reported on Monday.
A deal would create a market-leading business with some 27 million customer connections - making it larger than Virgin Media O2 and BT Group's EE, Sky added.Shares in Vodafone jumped after the report and were up 2 per cent at 103.16 pence by 0950 GMT, compared with a 0.8 per cent fall in the FTSE 100.