Finance
Europe telcos urge more mega-mergers to catch up to US, China on 5G
The Deutsche Telekom pavilion at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Angel Garcia | Bloomberg | Getty Images
BARCELONA — Europe’s telecommunication firms are ramping up calls for more industry consolidation to help the region compete more effectively with superpowers like the U.S. and China on key technologies like 5G and artificial intelligence.
Last week at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show in Barcelona, CEOs of several telecoms firms called on regulators to make it easier for them to combine their operations with other businesses and reduce the overall number of carriers operating across the continent.
Currently, there are numerous telco players operating in multiple EU countries and non-EU members such as the U.K. However, telco chiefs told CNBC this situation is untenable, as they’re unable to compete effectively when it comes to price and network quality.
“If we’re going to invest in technology, in deep know-how, and bring drastic change, positive drastic change in Europe — like other large technological companies have done in the U.S. or we’re seeing today in China — we need scale,” Marc Murtra, CEO of Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica, told CNBC’s Karen Tso in an interview.
“To be able to get scale, we need to consolidate a fragmented market like the telecoms market in Europe,” Murtra added. “And for that, we need a regulation that allows us to consolidate. So what we do ask is: please unleash us. Let us gain scale. Let us invest in technology and bring upon productive change.”
Christel Heydemann, CEO of French carrier Orange, said that while some mega-deal activity is starting to gather pace in Europe, more needs to be done to guarantee the continent’s competitiveness on the world stage.
Last year, Orange closed a deal to merge its Spanish operations with local mobile network provider Masmovil. Meanwhile, more recently, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority approved a £15 billion ($19 billion) merger between telecoms firms Vodafone and Three in the U.K., subject to certain conditions.
“We’ve been actively driving consolidation in Europe,” Orange’s Heydemann told CNBC. “We see things changing now. There’s still a lot of hope.”
However, she added: “I think there’s a lot of pressure in Europe from the business environment on our political leaders to get things to change. But really, things have not yet changed.”
During a fiery keynote address on Monday, the CEO of German telco Deutsche Telekom, Tim Höttges, said that other telco markets such as the U.S. and India have condensed in size to only a handful of players.
The American telco industry is dominated by its three largest mobile network operators, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. T-Mobile is majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom.
A chart comparing the share price performance of T-Mobile, America’s largest telco by market cap, with that of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom and France’s Orange.
“We need a reform of the of the competition policy,” Höttges said onstage at MWC. “We have to be allowed to consolidate our activities.”
“There is no reason that every market has to operate with three or four operators,” he added. “We should build a European single market … because, if we cannot increase our consumer prices, if we cannot charge the over-the-top players, we have to get efficiencies out of the scale which we created.”
“Over-the-top” refers to media platforms such as Netflix that deliver content over the internet, bypassing traditional cable networks.
Europe’s competitiveness in focus
From AI to advances to next-generation 5G networks, Europe’s telecoms firms have been investing heavily into new technologies in a bid to move beyond the legacy model of laying down cables that enable internet connectivity — a business model that’s earned them the pejorative term “dumb pipes.”
However, this costly endeavor of modernization has happened in tandem with sluggish revenue growth and an inability for the sector to effectively monetize its networks to the same degree that technology giants have done with the emergence of mobile applications and, more recently, generative AI tools.
At MWC, many mobile network operators talked up their usage of AI to improve network quality, better serve their customers and gain market share from competitors.
Still, Europe’s telco bosses say they could be accelerating their digital transformation journeys if they were allowed to combine with other large multinational players.
“There’s this real focus now around European competitiveness,” Luke Kehoe, industry analyst for Europe at network intelligence firm Ookla, told CNBC on the sidelines of MWC last week. “There’s a goal to mobilize policy to improve telecoms networks.”
In January, the European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, issued its so-called “Competitiveness Compass” to EU lawmakers.
The document calls for, among other things, “revised guidelines for assessing mergers so that innovation, resilience and the investment intensity of competition in certain strategic sectors are given adequate weight in light of the European economy’s acute needs.”
Meanwhile, last year former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi released a long-awaited report that urged radical reforms to the EU through a new industrial strategy to ensure its competitiveness.
It also calls for a new Digital Networks Act that would look to improve incentives for telcos to build next-generation mobile networks, reduce compliance costs, improve connectivity for end-users, and harmonize EU policy across the network spectrum, or the range of radio frequencies used for wireless communication.
“The common theme and the mood music is certainly reducing ex-ante regulation and to foster what they would call a more competitive environment which is an environment more conducive of consolidation,” Ookla’s Kehoe told CNBC. “Moving forward, I think that there will be more consolidation.”
However, the telco industry has some way to go toward seeing transformational cross-border mergers and acquisitions, Kehoe added.
For many telco industry analysts, the demands for increased consolidation is nothing new.
“European telco CEOs have never been shy about calling for consolidation and growth-friendly regulation,” Nik Willetts, CEO of the telco industry association TM Forum, told CNBC. “But regulation is only one piece of the puzzle.”
“In the last 12 months we’ve seen a new energy from our members in Europe to get on with the huge task to transform themselves: simplifying, modernizing and automating their operations and legacy tech.”
“This will make it possible to rapidly adapt to new customer needs and market realities, whether building new partnerships, undergoing M&A or delayering integrated businesses – all trends we expect to reach new heights over the next 24 months,” he added.
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For the generation that should be in its “peak savings years,” the prospect of retiring on time has shifted from a plan to a prayer.
A newly released Employee Financial Wellness Survey by PwC found that nearly 50% of Gen X employees are pushing back their retirement dates, citing stagnant wages, rising everyday costs, and a lack of liquid savings.
Additionally, only 38% of Gen Xers believe they can retire when they originally planned, and more than half of this demographic expect to withdraw funds from their retirement accounts early to cover short-term costs.
“For employers, this isn’t a future problem. Financial anxiety during peak career years can affect focus and engagement,” PwC researchers write. “If the risks are clear, the question is why more employees aren’t taking action. It’s not a lack of desire. Most employees want stability, confidence and to feel in control. But many don’t feel equipped to get there.”
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The primary driver of this retirement delay is the inability to save as inflation eats away at monthly expenses, the report notes. Twenty-five percent of the total workforce is living without a buffer, and nearly half cannot meet basic household expenses.
Nearly half of Gen X workers are delaying retirement, PwC reports. (Getty Images)
“[Forty-nine percent] say their compensation isn’t keeping up with costs. As expenses rise faster than income, day-to-day trade-offs are becoming routine. Employees aren’t just feeling squeezed. They’re making difficult financial decisions to stay afloat,” the PwC report continues..
As a result, when Gen Xers cannot afford to leave their current jobs, the entire corporate ladder stalls, creating business risks, with companies facing higher costs as older talent remains on payroll longer than expected.
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“When employees dip into retirement funds early or delay retirement altogether, it affects more than personal finances and retirement plan leakage,” the report says. “It may also influence workforce planning, healthcare costs, succession timing and overall organizational stability.”
The findings also show that a significant portion – 41% – of the workforce feel they were never given the tools to manage a crisis of this magnitude, leading to a sense of being “overwhelmed” by financial choices.
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PwC provided a call to action for employees and their employers, encouraging them to reduce the stigma around financial education, foster trust through human coaches, emphasize skill building and focus on day-to-day finances before long-term goals.
“Employees define financial wellness simply: less stress, fewer surprises and the freedom to make financial choices with confidence. For employers, that’s the opportunity.”
Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
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