British Telecommunications said this morning that it was taking a wider view of its options for floating its mobile phones division in the wake of the dismal flotation of Orange shares.
The company, which has previously insisted it was planning to float up to 25% of BT Wireless in the second half of the year, is no longer ruling out options for separating the business and is open to some mixture of demerger and initial public offering.
'We wouldn't rule anything out,' a spokesman said. 'We're likely to structure it in a not straightforward way ... a mixture of demerger and IPO is possible, but to say we're considering a full demerger is going too far.'
Finance Director Philip Hampton said he is exploring way to float up to 25% of Wireless by offering all the shares to existing BT shareholders or giving them preferential deals.
Some institutional shareholders are calling for BT to abandon the float in favour of a rights issue after France Telecom raised only a fraction of what it hoped for from the Orange float.
The Wireless float is the centrepiece of BT's plans to reduce debt by £10 billion to £20 billion. Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's has put further pressure on BT to change course on the float. It said on Friday it may downgrade the company's rating because of its inability to communicate a debt reduction strategy.
