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James Barford said: “We can see the strong strategic logic that Vodafone could do better if the individual country operations were run truly locally and independently, which is hard to achieve in a corporate structure without real autonomy. Is the current management likely to do that? It would be quite a reversal.”

Joe Teasdale, said: “The economics of AI chatbots are tough, with the free ChatGPT service constantly at capacity. So the golden era of ‘anybody can get an immediate, high-quality AI response for free, with no ads’ may be short-lived.”

“Google has a high bar for launching these kinds of products because of their low tolerance for reputational damage, and we have seen why last week with that embarrassing slip-up,” says Niamh Burns, online research analyst at Enders Analysis.

“But this kind of inaccuracy is a chatbot problem, not a Google problem. There’s no reason to think that ChatGPT is any more likely to generate accurate answers, and I’m not convinced any chatbot is ready to handle hundreds of millions of requests without some serious unforeseen issues.”

She added “People don’t click on ads because they are answering the kind of basic informational question a chatbot can answer."

Karen Egan, head of mobile at Enders Analysis, said the latest move from Liberty was ‘opportunistic’.

‘A 5 per cent stake will give them a voice and Liberty will be keen on deal-making – something that Vodafone has been accused of being too reluctant to do.’

“The real issue is that the price appears too high,” says Alice Enders at Enders Analysis. “Really what people are looking at is comparable deals, and it does seem like a lot.”

She added “The master rights holders simply cannot agree on the basic parameters of the sale.”

“Breaking up the News Corp stable is likely to release more value for shareholders in due course,” says Claire Enders, founder of Enders Analysis. “Rupert Murdoch did not have convincing arguments for value add.”

She added “There will have to be much renewed discipline at News Corp. We are always sympathetic to protecting plurality (everywhere) but it isn’t an argument the stock market has any time for. There is still time for digital transformation of those titles that can make it.”