Vodafone chooses Britain to launch new jobs as part of multi-billion pound home investment
Mobile operator Vodafone will today announce the creation of 2,100 jobs in one of the largest single UK employment expansions in recent years.
The new roles are part of Vodafone’s ongoing £2bn investment in Britain. Customer service positions will be created in the north of England, the Midlands, Scotland and Wales
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The move, hailed by Vodafone as underlining the importance of the “Northern Powerhouse”, was also praised by culture secretary Karen Bradley. She said it says proves the confidence global firms have to invest in a British economy that is “well and truly open for business”.
A further 900 jobs will be created by Vodafone’s third party partners.
Although listed in the London, Vodafone’s operations in the UK are one piece of a much larger international jigsaw. And Bradley praised the move by the FTSE 100 giant for putting money into its home base. She said:
Vodafone is one our country’s great international success stories and it’s fantastic this global organisation is demonstrating its confidence in the UK by creating new jobs.
The new jobs will be phased in over the coming years with 1,200 set to be filled within the next 24 months.
“These new, skilled roles will make a real difference to our customers and real difference to the communities that are the focus of our customer services investment,” said Vodafone’s UK chief executive Nick Jeffrey.
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Vodafone is facing a challenging UK market, with fierce competition from EE, O2 and Three making it hard for the firm to generate positive earnings.
New Zealand
Meanwhile, in February local competition authorities scuppered Vodafone’s plans to sell its New Zealand arm to Sky in a deal worth 1.3bn New Zealand dollars (£739m). Regulators said the deal would have created a monopoly over premium sports content in the country.
Vodafone is also in talks with Idea Cellular about a £10bn merger of its Indian operations. The business combination between India’s second and third biggest mobile operators would create one of the world’s largest, with 390m customers.
The merger would also provide Vodafone a partial exit from the country after investing $20bn in India and enduring a painful $5bn writedown of its investment last year in the wake a failed listing on the Indian stockmarket,