The price tag of one of the biggest corporate deals this year was agreed over a workout session and breakfast at the Four Seasons hotel in San Francisco between its head honchos. According to a Reuters report, this was how Verizon Communications Inc's Chief Executive Officer Lowell McAdam and Vodafone Group Plc's Chief Executive Officer Vittorio Colao arrived at the USD 130 billion deal.
McAdam told Reuters that he and Colao were not intent on a merger between Vodafone and Verizon early on. Rather, the idea of Verizon buying out the 45% stake that Vodafone holds in Verizon Wireless was more appealing.
McAdam told Reuters the events that led to the pricing of the deal. "We got up early. We were both down at the gym together, we had a brief conversation on the exercise bicycle. We looked at the final bit of data, and we said, 'Looks like $130 billion is about the right number and let's see if we can put a deal together around that,'" he explained.
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