Liberty Global will study opportunities in Southern Europe as the economy in the region improves, John Malone has said in an interview.
Malone, the chairman of Liberty Media, who has a controlling interest in Liberty Global told Bloomberg that Vodafone had pre-empted the company from consolidating the German cable market.
Liberty Global owns the second largest German cablenet Unitymedia and had previously expressed disappointment at the stance taken by regulators on possible further consolidation. Vodafone on the other hand, with interests primarily in telecoms, faces no such issues.
“We’re getting to the point where in northern Europe, we’re pretty much as far as we can go,” Malone said. “If southern Europe sort of hits the bottom, as it were, there are things we can do further south in scale.”
Earlier this year Liberty Global made a successful bid for the UK’s Virgin Media and has interests in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland and Hungary, amongst others. It has previously sold purchases in the Swedish and Norwegian markets.
