{"id":254026,"date":"2026-01-20T09:48:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T09:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/254026\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T09:48:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T09:48:07","slug":"virgin-media-owner-said-to-be-in-talks-to-buy-three-ireland-for-up-to-e1-5bn-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/254026\/","title":{"rendered":"Virgin Media owner said to be in talks to buy Three Ireland for up to \u20ac1.5bn \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/virgin-media\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/virgin-media\/\">Virgin Media<\/a>\u2019s parent is in talks to buy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/three-ireland\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/three-ireland\/\">Three Ireland<\/a> for as much as \u20ac1.5 billion, according to a report in the Financial Times. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Irish-American telecoms mogul <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/john-malone\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/john-malone\/\">John Malone<\/a>\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/liberty-global\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/liberty-global\">Liberty Global<\/a>, which owns Virgin Media, is holding the discussions with Hong Kong-based conglomerate <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/ck-hutchison\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/ck-hutchison\/\">CK Hutchison<\/a>, which owns the Three Ireland brand, the report said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Virgin Media only has a virtual operator, Virgin Mobile, in the State, in addition to its broadband network and broadcasting business. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">CK Hutchison has been gradually selling its European telecoms operations, which serve more than 60 million customers, amid tough market conditions that have pushed down prices and generated smaller returns. Last year, the group closed a \u00a316.5 billion deal to merge Three UK with Vodafone UK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The talks come a dozen years after CK Hutchison backed Three Ireland\u2019s purchase of the Irish arm of O2 for \u20ac850 million from Spain\u2019s Telef\u00f3nica, making the company the second-largest operator in the market. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Virgin Media\u2019s parent is in talks to buy Three Ireland for as much as \u20ac1.5 billion, according to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,24840,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-254026","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-mobile-phone","11":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}