Watching Spain penetrate the Portuguese defence for a 1-0 victory in the World Cup this week was clearly too much to bear. On June 30th, to prevent Spain's Telefonica seizing full control of Vivo, a valuable Brazilian mobile asset it jointly owns with Portugal Telecom, Portugal's government used its golden share in the national telecoms operator to block the Spaniards' attack. For shareholders in Portugal Telecom, the government has now become their archenemy. Just before the shareholder meeting Telefonica had offered a crazily high, revised price of €7.15 billion ($8.77 billion) for Portugal Telecom's share of Vivo. Of the Portuguese firm's shareholders who voted, three-quarters had just opted to accept the Spanish bid.
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