Who are the new partners of Telefónica after the merger in the United Kingdom

The operation was the miracle of the quarantine. The fact that two multinational companies can complete a major merger contract in times of social alienation, teleworking and travel bans between countries has amazed the economic world, as well as allowing the creation of a telecommunications giant that will operate in the UK to stand up to British Telecom on its own ground. 

The operation is fully symmetrical and can be summarized by placing, with the same symmetry, the actors that have completed it: Telefónica - O2 - Virgin Media -Liberty Global. The two parent companies, located at the extremes, benefit from the union that allows the most important mobile operator in the British market to join the broadband internet and television network used by more than ten million people. In total, 46.5 million users will benefit from a strategic alliance that once again demonstrates the importance of globalization, despite the localist siren calls that are emerging from the caves in this forced confinement of the world in the face of the threat of the coronavirus. The former British monopoly should be asked whether or not this merger is good news for them and the real importance it has at a time of depressed economies and a huge increase in unemployment rates across the planet. 

The two great architects of the operation by Liberty have profiles that exalt the entrepreneurial and courageous character in the business of many Americans. Two businessmen from the communication sector who have taken their companies to the world's top in their businesses. 

John C. Malone is the president of Liberty Media and Liberty Global. Born in Milford, Connecticut, in 1941, and a Catholic and a descendant of Irish immigrants, he was educated at Johns Hopkins University, so fashionable in Spain because of the reports on coronavirus tests. Forbes ranks him as the 186th richest person in the world, with some $8 billion in assets, and he is the third richest media mogul after Michael Bloomberg and Carl Icahn. 

He lives in Colorado, is a powerful landowner in this Midwestern state and also has vast land holdings estimated at two million acres in Maine, New Mexico and Wyoming. He has surpassed Ted Turner as the largest landowner in the most powerful country in the world, but he does not want unproductive land. Raising Silver Spur cattle is his specialty. He also owns two castles in Ireland, Humewood Castle south of Dublin and Castlemartin House in the countryside. 

He is known as the 'Cable Cowboy', a true 'tycoon' of cable television in the United States. His philanthropic interests are known throughout the country. Through his family's foundation, he has launched a program of subsidized scholarships at private schools in the United States. The largest donation he has ever made has benefited Colorado State University, to which he has accumulated $42.5 million in funds to promote stem cell research to cure diseases. A building on the Homewood campus of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore is named after his 2011 donation of $30 million to the university. 

His ideology has also led him to defend his position through money. He donated $250,000 to the inauguration of Donald Trump's term in January 2017. 

Mike Fries is the vice president of Liberty who we saw in the joint video with the president of Telefonica, Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, which was broadcast to publicize the merger. He is also the company's Chief Executive Officer. He was born in 1963, raised in Los Angeles and a member of a family linked to film by the profession of his father, a Hollywood producer. He studied at centres such as Wesleyan University and Columbia Business School, and both are aware of his philanthropic donations to encourage the development of his facilities and projects. She also lives in Colorado and forms, together with Malone, the Liberty executive committee that makes all the group's decisions. Fries is a veteran of the cable business, where he has been working for three decades, and has negotiated the details of the agreement directly with Pallete.