Carphone Warehouse buys Tiscali for £236 million

The Carphone Warehouse has silenced rumours that its TalkTalk broadband arm planned to buy Tiscali by doing just that and shelling out 236 million in the process.

The deal is expected to by completed by June this year and, once it has been given the regulatory green light, will bring TalkTalk's subscriber tally to more than four million.

"We are delighted to be acquiring Tiscali's UK business - we know the business well and the fit with TalkTalk is perfect. In one step, it makes TalkTalk the UK's largest residential broadband provider with over 25% residential market share and a total of 4.25 million customers," said Charles Dunstone, the Carphone Warehouse Group's chief executive, in a statement.

"It also delivers clear shareholder value with significant enhancement to this year's earnings per share and substantial synergies to be achieved next year and beyond. We very much welcome Tiscali's UK customers and staff to TalkTalk. Together we intend to continue leading the way in UK broadband."

Indeed, Carphone Warehouse believes that the deal will shave up to 50 million each year from TalkTalk's overheads through customer migration and unbundling and billing and network integration.

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.