By Dhirendra Tripathi

Investing.com – Vodafone stock (NASDAQ:) traded 4% higher in London on reports of activist investor Cevian Capital coming to own a stake in the telecom company.

ADRs that are Nasdaq-listed were up 0.4% 

Cevian, according to multiple reports, has been in contact with Vodafone officials over the past months. This is pushing Vodafone to increase its performance.

Reporters suggested that the British investment firm has three options: selling certain operations, consolidating its market presence or buying back stock.

It is also present in Spain, Germany, Italy and Spain. A joint venture was also established in India. However, the company reduced that entity’s value by more than 2 years due to repeated losses as well as years of legal dispute that have now ended.

At the time of its half-year results in November, Chief Executive Officer Nick Read talked up the company’s hunt to consolidate in its “major European markets”. Vodafone expressed interest late last year in acquiring CK Hutchison’s Three UK unit, Bloomberg reported this month.  In separate talks, Vodafone also met with Deutsche Telekom OTC: to discuss a merger of their tower businesses.

Bloomberg claims that Cevian does not like public fights. Instead, he prefers to have a large stake so managements can listen. The public is only made aware of the situation in which behind-the-scenes lobbying does not produce the desired results.

In the first half, Vodafone’s total revenue rose 5% to 22.5 billion euro ($25.2 billion) but profit fell more than 13% to 1.3 billion euro, mostly due to a one-time gain in the previous year.  

Vodafone is now part of a growing number of British businesses that are seeing increased activism from activist investors seeking to make changes. Shell (LON) and GlaxoSmithKline are two others.