Just to close the loop on Vodafone soars on possible Verizon stake sale, the deal was consummated yesterday at $130b. Vodafone shareholders will get $23.9b in cash and $60.15b in directly owned Verizon shares. Interestingly, Vodafone also gets Verizon’s 23% stake in Italy’s Omnitel.
Although Vodafone shareholders (of which I am one) may be rejoicing. It is not all unalloyed good news. Verizon was the mainstay of Vodafone’s generous dividend stream. That disappears. Vodafone is now essentially an EMEA operator – a market that is both mature and still suffering from the financial crisis.
Vodafone needs to think carefully about what it will do with its $30b ‘windfall’ left after the 
shareholder payouts. Becoming a triple or quad play (as suggested by others) will put them into an equally highly cut throat marketplace in Europe.
Footnote– Sometimes being a long term shareholder can seem pretty dumb. Everyone currently raves about the great share price and dividend performance of Vodafone; they have nearly doubled since mid 2009. But, as you can see in the chart, Vodafone is still down 50% from its peak achieved in March 2000 – just before the dot.com bubble burst.