We don’t usually go much on marketplace rumours, but when the excellent Paul Kunert (now at Channel Register) gets a scoop, experience tells us he’s usually very close to the mark. In this case, it’s about Cable & Wireless being in talks to buy PE-backed IT services firm, 2e2.
We have written extensively about 2e2 (start here), more so after it acquired Morse a little over a year ago. You can understand C&W's logic for the deal if you read what we wrote about Colt recently (see Colt to stand and deliver!). Colt partners with main market-listed Phoenix (actually, more the other way round), rather closer to a pure infrastructure services play than 2e2. So whether 2e2 is the ‘right answer’ for C&W is moot, at least in its current form.
And should the deal go ahead, one wonders how that might affect 2e2’s “contractual joint venture” with O2, to resell 2e2’s data centre services (see O2 dials in 2e2).
But let’s see what transpires …