Vodafone's perennial trier faces a setback

During his tenure at Vodafone, Gent was a successful one-man acquisitive cyclone, sometimes sounding (and looking) more like an investment banker than a FTSE 100 chief executive.

If there was a deal to be done you could bet your direct-dial that it would probably go Gent's way, helped not a little by Vodafone's immeasurably healthier share price in those far-off pre-millennium days.

Massive deals like Mannesman in Germany and AirTouch in the US transformed the scale of the British group, giving it a flamboyantly global signal.

Contrast that with Sarin. In early 2004, while still only virtually getting his feet under the table at Vodafone's Berkshire HQ, he excited the City with a multi-billion takeover approach for AT&T Wireless in the States, only to be beaten right at the wire by a higher offer from Cingular, the second biggest US wireless phone group.

Fast forward nearly three years, and Sarin is trying to win control of Hutchison Essar, the fourth biggest company in the Indian mobile market.

It would be a major deal for him, valued at circa $18bn.

But just when it looks like Sarin may be on the point of stepping out of Gent's acquisitive shadow it seems he may now be outbid again and consigned back to the pale vale of organic growth, average revenue per user and churn rates.

Essar, the Indian conglomerate that holds a one-third stake in Hutchison Essar, is now expected to bid for the rest of the company, having held talks with Hutchison Whampoa, owner of Hutchison Telecom, owner of the majority stake in the target.

Even more dispiritingly for Sarin, Reliance Communications, India's second biggest mobile services provider, has also made clear it might bid for Hutchison Essar.

Even if Vodafone wins the day, a three or four-way auction - private equity leviathan Kohlberg Kravis Roberts is also apparently in the frame - would at the very least push up the price the British company would have to pay.

Shades of Gent, it definitely does not have. It is more a case of form an orderly queue.

To add piquancy, Sir John Bond, Vodafone's chairman, is also an adviser in Asia to KKR.

Bond, says Vodafone, is stepping up to the plate solely on its behalf in this matter, essentially erecting a "Chinese wall" between him and KKR in the affair - always helpful, of course, when you are dealing with a Hong Kong-owned parent company.

However, taking events all in all and the mire that is potentially developing around any Essar deal, Sarin might just be absent-mindedly texting into his handset: Dmn.

Property passion

INTEREST rates have been hoisted twice by the Bank of England since the late summer; British house prices rose this month by their fastest annual rate in two years. Discuss.

Patently, it looks like homebuyers' ardour is not going to be cooled by the prospect of paying an extra twenty, thirty, forty quid a month that two quarter-point rate rises represent for millions of people.

Yesterday's Nationwide house price index said yesterday that the annual increase in 2006 was 10.5 per cent. It is resilient stuff on the part of buyers and their "friends" the estate agents, and it is quite doubtful that even a third rate increase early in the New Year would take the wind out of the market's sales. Nationwide, in fact, is forecasting house price growth of between 5 and 8 per cent in 2007.

Maybe, if the Bank of England is truly worried about the matter it should just bung an extra full per cent on rates and have done with it. "Incremental" doesn't seem to be working, after all.

Of course, there is about as much chance of that happening as Tony Blair turning down an exotic holiday in some millionaire's property.