Blackstone invest chunk of money in Deutsche Telekom

Blackstone, the US private equity outfit, has just decided to invest a chunk of change in Deutsche Telekom. And it makes you wonder why? After all the German ex PTT has hardly been performing very well the last couple of years.

But, Deutsche has the where with all to become the Verizon or AT&T of Europe and is well positioned to be a leader in the quadruple play - video on demand, hi-speed Internet access, fixed and mobile telephony.

And it isn't cool to be a single play operator any longer a la Vodafone. Convergence is the future. I guess Blackstone also like Deutsche's strategy of growing their mobile business in the US while also investing in Eastern Europe and driving integrated, converged services elsewhere.

Plus, Deutsche has been restructuring and laying folk off so hard that their share price is probably due for a technical bounce.