Carphone Warehouse and Talk Talk will officially 'demerge' today, with the ISP and retail chain splitting and being run as independent companies.
Ambitious plans for both companies – Talk Talk acquired Tiscali last year, while Carphone Warehouse has a 50 per cent stake in the European arm of Best Buy – already make this an interesting time for the two companies, but the split is also about risk.
ISP Talk Talk was apparently worth 60 per cent of the combined value of the company, but the might of the likes of Virgin Media and, most prominently, BT and the growing profile of superfast broadband means that tough times could lie ahead.
TALK and CPW
"The company will demerge into two entities; TalkTalk will list under the ticker "Talk" and new Carphone Warehouse will list as "CPW"," confirmed Reuters' stock watch report.
There is still talk that Talk Talk is ripe from a takeover by either one of the major mobile phone operators or even BSkyB, a company which is keen to extend its ISP reach.
Talk Talk is also one of the partners in the BBC-led IPTV partnership Project Canvas, which has been granted provisional approval by the BBC Trust and is currently being looked at by the Office of Fair Trading.
