I suppose the gossip about Telefonica having "no chance" was just gossip.

Oh darn, we've won.

Peter Erskine seems to have spent the last half year successfully hiding his
courtship of Telefonica from the City. All, that is, except Goldman Sachs Group - who advised Telefonica, with Citigroup and, of course, JPMorgan Cazenove and Merrill Lynch & Co, who advised O2.

So, despite last year's universal "awful warnings" from pundits, carrier mmo2 didn't need to get taken over by KPN after all. It's doing well says CEO Peter Erskine.

Better, he says, than KPN...