Vodafone buys 140 Phones4u stores, saving 900 jobs in the process
A lot can happen in a week: just five days after Phones4u announced it was entering administration, leaving 5,596 employees facing a very uncertain future, retailers and carriers alike have stepped in to strip the company of its most important parts. Dixons Carphone has already picked up 800 employees from its rival, and now Vodafone, one of the two operators that unceremoniously ended their relationship with Phones4u in recent weeks, has announced a deal to buy 140 former stores, saving a potential 900 jobs as a result. Vodafone says it was approached by the company's administrator and "decided to make an offer to buy 140 of its stores as a way to accelerate our retail expansion programme and save hundreds of jobs." While some people will swap their Phones4u role for a Vodafone position, today's restructuring efforts also came at cost. The administrator announced 628 employees at Phones4u's head office in Newcastle-under-Lyme and telesales staff in Staffordshire were today made redundant in an attempt to reduce expenses. There's currently no word on which stores the Vodafone intends to rebrand, but we've asked the company for more details.
