‘Our immediate priority is to stabilise the business,’ said BT Group CEO Allison Kirkby.

BT Group has acquired the consumer and wholesale operations of its struggling UK rival TalkTalk for roughly £400m.

The company said that it will “step in immediately” to provide uninterrupted services to TalkTalk’s 2.5m customers, which includes around 250,000 retail customers reportedly deemed to be “vulnerable”. Its wholesale unit, PXC, has roughly 1m customers, including the British Ministry of Defence.

The 2003-founded business has struggled to compete against its bigger rivals in recent years, including the likes of BT and Sky.

TalkTalk’s retail customer base, as a result, has dwindled from around 4m in 2019 to roughly 1.5m this year. BT, on the other hand, will boast more than 32m retail customers globally after this purchase. It is the UK’s largest broadband provider, with a market share of about 30pc according to third-party analysis.

In 2021, TalkTalk was taken private in a £1.1bn acquisition by London-based multi-asset investment management firm Toscafund and its sister company Penta Capital.

Over the past 12 months, the company reported losses on a revenue of around £1.2bn. Earlier this year, its shareholders and lenders, including Ares Management, infused about £115m into the business.

This followed a capital injection of £235m as part of a refinancing in December 2024 and an additional £120m last year. The company’s backers have been attempting to sell the failing business for months.

By acquiring the business out of administration, BT said it will be providing “much-needed and immediate reassurance” for TalkTalk’s employees, which, as of February 2025, numbered roughly 1,705.

“This is a genuinely unprecedented situation, where millions of citizens and businesses were at risk if TalkTalk had collapsed … BT acquiring TalkTalk is now the only viable option to keep millions of customers connected and supported,” said BT Group’s CEO Allison Kirkby.

“Our immediate priority is to stabilise the business and provide a safety net for the households and businesses who rely on TalkTalk.”

The company expects the UK government to conduct a regulatory review of the transaction, given that Openreach, the broadband network owned by BT, is also TalkTalk’s largest supplier. Until then, the two businesses will continue to operate separately, BT said.

“Over a period of time, the transaction will create value for all our stakeholders – customers, colleagues, the country and our owners,” Kirkby added.

BT said that stabilisation efforts at TalkTalk will be led by Clive Selley, the group’s CEO for international operations. Martijn Blanken will be the new CEO of BT International.

TalkTalk had previously held talks to sell its wholesale division PXC to Octopus Investments and its consumer operation to Opus Broadband. Those talks, however, failed.

Earlier this year, BT and the US’s Verizon Communications announced plans to combine their international enterprise units into a 50-50 joint venture aimed at multinational connectivity.

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