Vodafone Group completed a sale of its Spanish operation to Zegona Communications for €5 billion, concluding a process commenced in late 2023 which ends the UK group’s direct presence in the country.

The deal involves a €4.1 billion cash element and €900 million in redeemable preference shares. In their respective statements, Vodafone and Zegona Communications each noted the enterprise value was higher than various earnings metrics for the year to end-September 2023.

Zegona Communications previously announced former Euskaltel CEO Jose Miguel Garcia (pictured) will head up the Spanish business: it stated the appointment reunites “a team that has a proven track record of highly successful operational transformations in Spanish telecoms”.

Vodafone explained it would still have a presence in Spain through a service arrangement with Zegona Communications and an innovation hub in the city of Malaga.

Zegona Communications noted a renewed, ten-year network access deal signed with Spanish fibre player Finetwork earlier this week “demonstrates our ability to move swiftly on our well-defined strategy”, as it argued the case for its ability to boost the performance of Vodafone Spain and deliver shareholder value.