Vodafone Group posts the biggest annual loss in European corporate history

Vodafone Group posts the biggest annual loss in European corporate history

As the market had anticipated, mobile industry giants Vodafone Group has come out with the biggest annual loss in European corporate history on write-downs.

The company also has plans to increase dividends and return 9 billion pounds to shareholders.

Vodafone posted a net loss of 21.9 billion pounds. This is a major disappointment from profits of 6.41 billion pounds a year ago. Most of these losses are due to the 23.5 billion-pound write-down of assets especially in the German market.

Chief Executive Officer Arun Sarin however went onto increase the payouts to keep the investors happy with the company. He also went on to sell the company’s Japanese unit last fiscal year and is now working towards reorganizing the company to improve profits from their European operations.

The company’s sales were up at 29.4 billion pounds from 26.7 billion pounds a year ago. Vodafone now plans to cut costs by as much as 264 million pounds over three to five years through outsourcing of IT services and centralization of certain activities.