BT Group plc is a British multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in London, England. It has operations in around 180 countries and is the largest provider of fixed-line, broadband and mobile services in the UK, and also provides subscription television and IT services.
Tesco PLC is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, England. It is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by gross revenues and the ninth-largest in the world measured by revenues. It has shops in five countries across Europe, and is the market leader of groceries in the UK.
Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and then sells in smaller quantities to consumers for a profit. Retailers are the final link in the supply chain from producers to consumers. Shopping generally refers to the act of buying products. Sometimes this is done to obtain final goods, including necessities such as food and clothing; sometimes it takes place as a recreational activity. Recreational shopping often involves window shopping and browsing: it does not always result in a purchase.
Eircom Limited, trading as Eir, is a large fixed, mobile and broadband telecommunications company in Ireland. The now privatised company, which is currently incorporated in Jersey, traces its origins to the Ireland's former state-owned monopoly telecommunication provider Telecom Éireann and its predecessors, P&T and before the foundation of the state, the telecommunications division of the GPO. It remains the largest telecommunications operator in Ireland and has overseas operations focused on the business and corporate telecom markets in the United Kingdom. The company was in majority state ownership until 1999, when it was privatised through a floatation on the Irish and New York Stock Exchanges.
O2 (typeset as O2) is a global brand name owned by the Spanish telecommunications company Telefónica. The company uses the O2 brand for its subsidiaries in the United Kingdom and Germany. Since 2018, it is also used as an online-only flanker brand in Spain.
Vodafone Ireland Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Vodafone Group, is a mobile phone network and broadband provider in the Republic of Ireland. It was created when the Vodafone Group bought Eircell, the mobile arm of Telecom Éireann. As of September 2019, Vodafone has 26% of broadband subscribers, and 43% of mobile phone subscribers.
Telefónica Ireland was a broadband and telecommunications provider in Ireland that traded under the O2 brand (typeset as O2). O2 Ireland was previously called Esat Digifone when it was owned by Esat Telecommunications (and Telenor) from 1997 to 2006.
Dixons Retail plc was one of the largest consumer electronics retailers in Europe. In the United Kingdom, the company operated Currys, Currys Digital, PC World, Dixons Travel and its service brand Knowhow.
The Carphone Warehouse Limited was a mobile phone retailer based in London, United Kingdom. In August 2014 the company became a subsidiary of Currys plc, which was formed by the merger of its former parent Carphone Warehouse Group with Dixons Retail. Prior to this merger, Carphone Warehouse Group was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Following the closure of all stand-alone UK stores in April 2020, all remaining Carphone Warehouse UK outlets were within branches of Currys PC World. In April 2021, the Carphone Warehouse business in Ireland was closed with immediate effect. It traded as Carphone Warehouse in the United Kingdom, and as Phone House elsewhere, before being absorbed into Currys in October 2021.
Rakuten.co.uk is a website owned by Rakuten, that operates as an online marketplace. The website does not sell any products directly, but instead allows third party sellers to sell their products. The website replaced Play.com, which was originally established in Jersey as an online retailer of entertainment products including DVDs and music, which subsequently expanded its product offering.
Plusnet plc is a British triple play internet service provider (ISP); providing broadband, landline and mobile services. The company was founded in 1997 in Sheffield, England, and became a public limited company (plc) in July 2004 when it was floated on the Alternative Investment Market. On 30 January 2007, Plusnet was acquired by BT Group, but it continues to operate as a separate business. By December 2013, it had over 750,000 customers across the UK.
Argos Limited, trading as Argos, is a catalogue retailer operating in the United Kingdom and Ireland, acquired by Sainsbury's supermarket chain in 2016. It was established in November 1972 and is named after the Greek city of Argos. The company trades both through physical shops and online, with 29 million yearly shop customers, and nearly a billion online visitors per annum. It has also franchised overseas to countries such as China.
Dixons was a British high-street retailer of consumer electronics, originally founded in 1937 as a photographic studio by Charles Kalms. The company would later deal in many consumer electronics, with nationwide outlets in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
PC World was a British retail chain of mass market computer megastores. Established in November 1991, it became part of Dixons Retail in February 1993, and then part of Dixons Carphone, after the merger of Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse in August 2014. All of its physical shops in the United Kingdom traded under the combined "Currys PC World" brand, although this was retired in October 2021, after which point the company became known simply as “Currys”.
Primark is an Irish multinational fast fashion retailer with headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. It is a subsidiary of Associated British Foods and has stores across Europe and in the United States. The Penneys brand is not used outside of Ireland because it is owned elsewhere by American retailer J. C. Penney.
In the Republic of Ireland, the retail sector provides one of the largest sources of employment in the economy, representing over 12% of the workforce. As of 2017, approximately 40,000 wholesale and retail businesses employed almost 280,000 people in Ireland, with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment reporting that 90% of these businesses were Irish-owned.
TalkTalk Telecom Group plc is a company which provides pay television and Internet access services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 2003 as a subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse and was demerged as a standalone company in March 2010. Its headquarters are in Salford.
Target Corporation is an American big box department store chain headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is the eighth largest retailer in the United States, and a component of the S&P 500 Index. Target was established as the discount division of Dayton's department store of Minneapolis in 1962. It began expanding the store nationwide in the 1980s, and introduced new store formats under the Target brand in the 1990s. The company has found success as a cheap-chic player in the industry. The parent company was renamed Target Corporation in 2000, and divested itself of its last department store chains in 2004. It suffered from a massive, highly publicized security breach of customer credit card data and the failure of its short-lived Target Canada subsidiary in the early 2010s, but experienced revitalized success with its expansion in urban markets within the United States.
O2 UK (legally incorporated as Telefónica UK Limited) is a British telecommunications services provider, headquartered in Slough, England which operates under the O2 brand. It is owned by VMED O2 UK Limited, a 50:50 joint venture between Telefónica and Liberty Global. O2 is the UK's largest mobile network operator, with 31.3 million subscribers as of September 2021.
EE is a British mobile network operator and internet service provider, which is a brand within the BT Group. EE is the second-largest mobile network operator in the United Kingdom, with 26.1 million subscribers as of September 2021.
£200m (2008)
