Six major Vodafone investors said $100 billion was not enough for the British company's stake in its U.S. joint venture with Verizon Communications, and urged the latter to come up with an offer of at least $120 billion.Their comments followed a Reuters report on Wednesday that Verizon had hired advisers to prepare a possible $100 billion bid to purchase Vodafone's 45 percent stake in their Verizon Wireless joint venture, likely to be structured as a roughly 50:50 cash and stock bid.Should the $100 billion figure stand, the six shareholders, with around 1.3 billion of Vodafone's shares between them, said they would prefer the British group to push for a full merger with Verizon instead.The main concern among investors contacted by Reuters was the fact that a sale of Verizon Wireless - the best performing asset by far in the Vodafone portfolio - would highlight the operator's exposure to its troubled European markets.
Verizon Communications Inc. (Verizon) is a holding company. Shares of VZ remained unchanged at $53.63. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $39.85 and as high as $53.71. On average, 13878100 shares of VZ exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 0.
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