It’s mavericks like Elon Musk who’ll get us through this crisis

This month’s most significant corporate deal attracted less attention than it might have done in normal times, crowded out by grim news elsewhere. It is the proposed £31 billion merger of O2 and Virgin Media to create a telecoms giant with 46 million customers. Following BT’s 2016 acquisition of the mobile operator EE, further ‘convergence’ in the sector had been expected, but the mid-lockdown timing was spun as a vote of confidence in the UK, described as ‘one of the most attractive markets on Earth’ by José María Alvarez–Pallete, chief executive of Telefónica of Spain, which owns O2.

Investment of £10 billion in the new group’s mobile, broadband and television platforms is promised over the next five years. But sceptics noted that both Telefónica and Virgin Media’s owner, Liberty Global of the US, will be taking cash out, while the venture starts life with £18 billion of debt — so there’s also an element of defensive financial engineering, not to say alchemy.