O2 sale or IPO back on table

Telefonica, moving forward with a sale of stock in its infrastructure business as it seeks to pare debt, could do the same with its British wireless unit O2 this year if market conditions are favourable, chairman Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete said.

“We have been working to list it, so if today or in the next few weeks we decided to do so, we could do it by year’s end,” Mr Pallete said at a dinner with reporters in Santander on Sunday.

Selling a stake in the UK carrier to a strategic investor is also still an option, he said: “We could objectively do either one of the two things by year’s end. If markets closed, we would wait. We don’t have the obligation to list or sell at any price.”