French billionaire Xavier Niel snaps up 2.5% stake in Vodafone

Niel owns telecoms provider Iliad and is a long-term investor in the telecoms sector across several European and African markets. He has investments in nine countries in Europe with nearly 50m active subscribers combined and more than €10bn of revenues.

Atlas said on Wednesday that it had identified Vodafone "as an attractive investment opportunity, as per the quality of its assets portfolio and the solid underlying trends in the global telecommunications sector".

"Atlas Investissement is supportive of Vodafone’s publicly-stated intention to pursue consolidation opportunities in selected geographies, as well as its efforts in infrastructure separation," it said.

"Atlas Investissement’s view is that there are opportunities to accelerate both the streamlining of Vodafone’s footprint and the separation of its infrastructure assets, further reduce costs, improve profitability, accelerate broadband development in Germany and other geographies and enhance focus on innovation."

At 1000 BST, Vodafone shares were up 2.3% at 108.78p.