Tom Harrington, head of television for Enders Analysis, the media research company, told the Times: “There is such a disparity between the figures that he generates online and what he gets on TalkTV.

“It is just out of kilter with his profile, the high production values and all the money spent promoting the show."

“Most of the exposure to his interviews is from the two-minute clips, which work much better than burying him down the TV guide with a hundred channels above it which make it difficult to find.”

Karen Egan, head of mobile at Enders Analysis, said the results were “strong on a headline level” but warned the figures were skewed by “erratic” growth in markets such as Italy and Egypt.

“These companies are still investing large amounts but capital deployed is going into technology like AI that is designed to reduce headcount intensity in the long run,” said Jamie MacEwan, Enders. “The next big bet is that they can do more with less.”

“She’s all signed up to the strategy,” says Karen Egan, head of mobile at Enders Analysis. “Nonetheless, you will expect her to want to make her own mark somewhat, and I suppose there’s probably a bit of nervousness about what that might look like.”

“I’m not a huge fan of all this tinkering and restructuring in telecoms companies, just to make your mark as a new chief executive,” says Egan. “BT is not a place for revolutions.”

On valuation grounds the proposed transaction favoured Iliad. The JV, with an enterprise value of €14.9bn, would have raised €7bn in new debt to pay €6.6bn to Vodafone and €0.4bn to Iliad. That would have left Vodafone with cash and securities worth €10.5bn, or eight times its Italian unit’s forecast ebitda after lease payments. Iliad, admittedly faster growing but as yet barely profitable, would have been valued at 17 times ebitda, estimates Karen Egan at Enders Analysis. 

“Culturally, Vodafone is closer to Swisscom than to Iliad, whose methods of forcing the agenda, for example anticipating the publication of a press release on its own offer, may have irritated management,” notes Karen Egan , the telecoms analyst for the London firm Enders.

Karen Egan, an analyst at Enders Analysis, also sees a bigger benefit: “Unlike most industry consolidation, a merger in the mobile sector does not imply taking capacity out of the market – in fact the reverse”. So, there’d be the same amount of spectrum but more competition to fill it, potentially leading to better deals from “mobile virtual network operators”, such as Tesco, Asda and Sky that offer services via the four networks.