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Adnan Al-Jaziri

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  • 4 min read
  • e& sold its full 16.21 percent Vodafone holding for about $5.95 billion.
  • The e& Vodafone stake sale ends the firm’s role as Vodafone’s largest shareholder.
  • Xavier Niel’s Vodafone control grows through the Niel family group’s Vega vehicle.
  • The e& $5.95 billion deal delivers a net cash return of nearly $1.3 billion.

e& exits Vodafone Group after selling its entire stake for roughly $5.95 billion today. The Abu Dhabi firm ended its Vodafone role following a full international portfolio review. Investors watched as the Niel family group Vega vehicle agreed to take the shares. This e& Vodafone stake sale covers about 16.21 percent of the British telecom operator, WAM announced. You now see one of the region’s largest overseas holdings change hands right now.

Why e& exits Vodafone Group now

The deal prices each Vodafone share at 112.5 pence for the incoming buyer group. Roughly 110.5 pence arrives as cash, plus a final 2.02 pence dividend per share. Investors note the price sits near 13 percent above Vodafone’s recent market value today. Three financial institutions will hold the shares while Vega finishes its regulatory approval work. The e& $5.95 billion deal includes this final dividend within the total cash proceeds. Once complete, the sale should return about 4.7 billion dirham, near $1.3 billion net. As I see it, this move signals a sharper focus on core home operations. Company leaders framed the exit as a natural step within evolving strategic business priorities. Analyst Kester Mann said the firm now wishes to concentrate on its core businesses.

Xavier Niel Vodafone influence grows sharply as his family group becomes the top owner. The French billionaire founded Iliad and has long backed European telecom consolidation across markets. His arrival makes the Niel family the new Vodafone largest shareholder by voting rights. Vodafone welcomed the change and called the Niel group a supportive, long-term future backer. For you as a market watcher, ownership shifts often shape a company’s future direction. e& exits Vodafone Group only three years after first buying into the British firm. Back in 2022, the group bought an initial 9.8 percent Vodafone position for billions. Over time, it raised the holding above 16 percent through several separate share purchases.

What the e& Vodafone stake sale means for you

The e& Vodafone stake sale frees fresh cash for spending at home in the Gulf. Recently, the firm also sold part of its Careem holding to Uber for cash. Both moves show a clear plan to back core telecom and technology work first. e& exits Vodafone Group while keeping the door open for future joint venture projects. You should watch how the buyer completes its regulatory steps in the coming weeks. The full e& exits Vodafone Group story will shape talk about Gulf overseas strategy.

e& held exactly 3,944,743,685 Vodafone ordinary shares before agreeing to this planned large exit. Those shares equal about 17.13 percent of the total voting rights across Vodafone today. The buyer will pay nearly 4.4 billion pounds for the whole large share block. Vodafone shares rose sharply on the news, climbing about 12 percent early last Friday. Meanwhile, e& stock also gained around 4.5 percent as traders welcomed the cash return.

Xavier Niel Vodafone strategy points to more deals

Xavier Niel Vodafone plans focus on backing long-term growth across the European telecom market. His Iliad group has chased mergers and bigger scale in fragmented European telecom markets. Vodafone itself keeps reshaping under its chief executive since she took charge in 2023. Analysts expect the new owner to push for a clearer strategy and stronger returns soon. For readers across the Gulf, this exit shows how quickly overseas bets can shift. You will want to track e& earnings to see where the fresh cash lands.

About e&

Official Website: https://www.eand.ae/

Emirates Telecommunications Group Company PJSC (branded as e&) is a UAE-based global telecom and technology conglomerate. It provides mobile, broadband, enterprise solutions, and digital services across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe, serving over 150 million subscribers.

Strategic Role:

  • Core Cash Flow: High-margin telecom subscriptions and enterprise connectivity
  • Expansion Play: Aggressive international footprint across emerging markets
  • Digital Pivot: Investing in fintech, cloud, AI, and digital platforms beyond telecom

Bottom Line:
e& is a cash-generating telecom giant transitioning into a diversified tech player, leveraging scale, infrastructure, and sovereign backing to capture long-term digital economy growth.

TAGS
  • Abu Dhabi, Business, e&, Media, Telecom, UAE, Vodafone

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Lamborghini Revuelto SV
  • Lamborghini

The Lamborghini Revuelto SV launched Friday as a limited-edition hybrid version of the automaker’s V12 flagship, and the company is calling it the fastest, most powerful production car it has ever built. Only 1,963 will be made worldwide.

The number carries meaning. It marks the year Lamborghini was founded, a detail the brand has leaned on before with other limited runs. Buyers who secure one join a small club that tends to hold its value well after the sale.

What powers the Revuelto SV?

The Revuelto SV starts with Lamborghini’s naturally aspirated V12 engine and pairs it with three electric motors. Combined, the setup pushes output past 1,050 horsepower, enough to send the car from a standstill to 100 kph, or 62 mph, in 2.4 seconds. That places the Revuelto SV among the quickest production cars sold anywhere.

Alessandro Farmeschi, the Revuelto’s product line director, told CNBC the SV gives buyers a way to push further into what the platform can do. “The Revuelto SV gives our customers the opportunity to go beyond in terms of performance,” he said. He described the goal as building something race-oriented while keeping the experience fun rather than purely clinical.

The V12 remains central to that mission. Farmeschi pointed to engine sound as a defining part of what buyers expect from the brand. “The V12 has been the key since the very beginning, since the foundation of the company,” he said. The hybrid system adds power without pulling focus from that signature note.

Design changes built for the track

Lamborghini announced that beyond the powertrain, the Revuelto SV picks up sharper aerodynamic elements. Lamborghini reworked the fins, wings, and air intakes to direct airflow more precisely and generate added downforce at speed. A retuned suspension and new carbon-ceramic brakes back up the extra power, and a new Pilota driving mode unlocks a setup built specifically for track use.

The cabin follows the same theme. Lamborghini refitted the interior to feel closer to a race car or fighter jet cockpit than a road car. Buyers can choose sport seats built around a carbon shell, or step up to optional monocoque carbon fiber race seats. The latter trade some comfort for a more direct connection to the car, similar to what a driver would find in motorsport.

Pricing and demand for the Revuelto SV

The Revuelto SV starts at $741,172, a jump over the standard Revuelto that reflects both the added hardware and the limited production run. Lamborghini’s past limited editions have often sold out before the public even sees a formal announcement, and SV variants in particular tend to draw stronger demand and higher resale prices in the collector market.

Farmeschi framed the appeal beyond raw numbers. “When you buy a Lamborghini, you buy a Lamborghini because you want it, because you like it, you want to experience driving it, but also because it’s a car that keeps its value over time,” he said. For a car built in such small numbers, that combination of desire and scarcity tends to matter as much as the spec sheet.

Photo Credit: Lamborghini

  • 3 min read
Nvidia Lines Up $500 bn for AI Buildout
  • AI Investments

Nvidia just found $500 bn for AI buildout, and it didn’t have to write the check itself.

On Monday, the chipmaker announced memorandums of understanding with six of Wall Street’s biggest names: Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR. The goal is to stand up independent compute financing platforms that pull in more than $500 billion in third-party capital, money that flows toward building the data centers running on Nvidia hardware.

Think of it like a mortgage for GPUs. Instead of a cloud provider or AI lab draining its own balance sheet to buy chips, an outside lender fronts the capital, and the GPU cluster itself, plus the revenue it generates, backs the loan. That’s the model Nvidia is pitching to the market this week.

Why $500 bn for AI Buildout Matters Now

Big Tech isn’t slowing down. Combined AI spending across the major players is on track to clear $730 billion this year alone. Every one of those dollars has to come from somewhere, and increasingly, that somewhere is outside the tech companies’ own books.

This is where Nvidia AI financing platforms come in. The arrangements are designed to widen access to Nvidia-based infrastructure for frontier AI developers, enterprises, governments and cloud providers. For the six financial firms, it opens a new kind of long-duration, usage-linked investment tied directly to compute demand rather than to a company’s broader credit profile.

Huang framed it plainly in Nvidia’s statement: “These financing platforms will help customers access scarce compute at scale and build the AI factories that will power every industry and country in the age of AI.” Nvidia also said the setup would create dedicated pools of capital at attractive rates, though it stopped short of naming a timetable or individual commitment sizes.

What This AI Infrastructure Financing Actually Looks Like

Here’s the part worth watching closely. Nvidia hasn’t disclosed which of the six firms will lend, which will insure, and which will package and resell the risk. KKR has already floated the idea of securitizing AI infrastructure revenue, carving it into pieces institutional investors can buy. BlackRock’s Larry Fink went further, comparing the setup to the early mortgage-backed securities market of the 1970s.

That comparison cuts both ways. Mortgage-backed securities eventually built a trillion-dollar market. They also became infamous decades later. Nobody is claiming AI compute financing will follow that same arc, but the analogy signals how seriously Wall Street is treating this compute financing opportunity.

Huang has also said Nvidia itself may back up to 25 percent of a given financing deal, which keeps the company financially tied to its own customer base. If demand for AI computing power cools, Nvidia isn’t fully insulated from that risk. It’s a partner in the platforms, not just a hardware vendor standing on the sidelines.

The Numbers Behind the $500 bn for AI Buildout Push

None of the six firms has confirmed exactly how much capital they’ll each put toward the effort. The $500 billion figure describes the target ceiling across all six platforms combined, not a jointly pooled fund sitting ready to deploy. Terms, borrowers and timelines remain, in Nvidia’s own words, still being worked out.

Still, the direction is clear. This is meant to be the first AI data center funding structure of its kind at this scale, built specifically around Nvidia’s ecosystem. BlackRock and Goldman Sachs both manage retirement and pension money, so if the platforms scale as planned, exposure to AI infrastructure debt could eventually touch retirement accounts most people never think to connect to a GPU order.

The Financial Times reported the deal first on Monday, with Reuters confirming shortly after. For now, the framework is set. The dollar figures, and the risk that comes with them, are still being written.

  • 4 min read
eRedCap live network test
  • Telecom

e& UAE has completed an eRedCap live network test on its commercial 5G network, the first such test announced by any telecom operator. eRedCap, short for enhanced Reduced Capability, is a stripped-down version of 5G built for devices that do not need full 5G speed or power. The company said the result gives businesses and public bodies a practical way to move Internet of Things (IoT) equipment off older LTE technology and onto a 5G-native IoT platform.

What the eRedCap live network test showed

The eRedCap live network test ran on e& UAE’s live commercial network, not a lab setup. Engineers reached download speeds of up to 10Mbps on eRedCap devices while using a 5MHz slice of NR-FDD spectrum. A Data Transmission Unit, a module that sends device data across the network, confirmed the service worked from end to end. That narrow 5MHz channel matters. It keeps device hardware simple and cheap, which suits equipment made in large volumes.

eRedCap 5G IoT sits between two extremes. Full 5G handles phones and heavy data. Low-power options like NB-IoT handle slow trickles of data from simple sensors. Many devices fall in the middle. Smart utility meters, industrial sensors, fleet trackers, payment terminals, building systems, and some wearables need steady coverage and long battery life, not top speed. The technology targets that middle band. It runs on a 5G Standalone network, meaning a 5G core rather than one leaning on 4G underneath.

RedCap battery life is already improved on standard 5G. RedCap pushes it further. Because peak data rates stay low and the channel is narrow, a device can run 5 to 10 years on one battery, against 1 to 3 years for RedCap. That figure sits close to the low-power radio technologies many meters use today. On cost, coverage, and battery life, eRedCap matches LTE Cat-1 and Cat-1bis. That makes it an LTE Cat-1 replacement built for 5G, which matters as operators plan to switch off LTE and reclaim that spectrum.

What it means for enterprises

The step builds on earlier work. In 2024, e& UAE became the first operator in the Middle East and Africa to bring Ericsson’s 5G Standalone RedCap into a commercial network. eRedCap extends that effort to an even lower cost and power tier.

Abdulrahman Al Humaidan, Senior Vice President, Access Network Development at e& UAE, said eRedCap brings everyday IoT applications into the 5G era at the right cost, power, and coverage. He said proving the capability on a live commercial network gives utilities, manufacturers, logistics providers, and smart-city operators a credible path to scale connected devices and prepare for the shift beyond LTE. e& UAE’s eRedCap live network test points beyond a single demo.

The practical gain is fewer parallel networks to run. Firms can move more IoT use cases onto 5G Standalone instead of keeping separate paths for high-performance 5G and LTE-based devices. That can simplify how devices are managed over their lifetime and tighten security across large fleets. It also supports the long-term reuse of LTE spectrum, since not every device would need full 5G hardware to make the move. The eRedCap live network test gives that transition an early proof point on a working network.

  • 3 min read
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