Bharti Big Shots Storm BT Boardroom After £3.6B Raid

BT - Britain's former state-owned telecoms monopoly - has confirmed that execs from Bharti Global, its largest shareholder, are joining the board with immediate effect.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, founder and chairman at Bharti Airtel Limited, and Gopal Vittal, vice chairman and managing director at the Indian biz that last year hoovered up a 24.5 percent stake in BT from Altice boss Patrick Drahi, are taking a seat at BT's top table.

They will act as representatives of Bharti Televentures UK Limited, a business established and wholly owned by Bharti Global, under a "relationship agreement" entered into with BT - this is intended to outline the terms of collaboration, financial arrangements and operations.

The pair bring "significant experience and global perspectives in the telecoms industry," said BT Chairman Adam Crozier. Mittal said he wants to work with BT management to "drive forward the strategy to win in the market."

BT said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange:

The Indian telco giant bought the sizeable stake in BT in August 2024 for around £3.6 billion (c $4.9 billion) and the share price has rallied by around 20 percent since that point, with investors believing in CEO Allison Kirkby's strategy.

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This largely centers on BT concentrating on UK customers and scaling back its global operations, including the sale of global information exchange networks biz Radianz to multinational Transaction Network Services; selling BT Italia to Telecom Italia and Retelit; selling off its Irish wholesale and enterprise unit BTCIL to Speed Fibre Group, and allowing Equinix to buy its Irish datacenters.

Joining the board and the relationship agreement indicates that Bharti Group is taking a more active role in BT, and telecoms expert Mark Jackson at ISP Review pointed out this type of activity can "trigger talk about takeovers."

He said there are "still plenty of hurdles for a suitor to consider (e.g. the increasingly competitive UK full fiber market, the high level of debt, high interest rates, political opposition and so forth)."

Approval would also need come from the UK government, given the importance of BT to the country, "although the UK's relatively new National Security and Investment Act (NSIA) is unlikely to throw up any real obstacles until or unless Bharti's stake goes beyond the 25 percent mark," said Jackson. ®