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The story
Background of global ownership of Orange: Before May 2000
In May 2000, the Orange brand, through a complex set of mergers and divisions, was acquired and eventually retained by Orange S.A., then a fully owned subsidiary of France Télécom. The chain of mergers that led to the May 2000 acquisition is as follows.
The inception of the Orange brand was in 1990 in the United Kingdom with the formation of "Microtel Communications Ltd" - a consortium initially formed by Pactel Corporation (American), British Aerospace (BAe, now BAE Systems), Millicom, and Matra (French); and later, to be wholly owned by BAe. In July 1991, the Hong Kong-based conglomerate - Hutchison Whampoa through a stock swap deal with BAe, acquired a controlling stake of 65% in Microtel, who by then had won a license to develop a Personal communications network (PCN) network in United Kingdom.
Subsequently, Hutchison renamed Microtel to Orange Personal Communications Services Ltd, and on 28 April 1994, Orange brand was launched in the UK mobile phone market. A holding company structure was adopted in 1995 with the establishment of Orange plc. In April 1996, Orange went public and floated on the London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, majority owned by Hutchison (48.22%), followed by BAe (21.1%). In June 1996, it became the youngest company to enter the FTSE 100, valued at £2.4 billion. And by July 1997 Orange had gained one million customers.
The stint as a public company came to an end in October 1999, when it was acquired for US$33 Billion by the German conglomerate - Mannesmann AG. The Mannesmann's acquisition of Orange triggered Vodafone to make a hostile takeover bid for the German company. Shortly thereafter, in February 2000, Vodafone acquired Mannesmann for US$183 Billion and, decides to divest Orange as the EU regulations wouldn't allow it to hold two mobile licences. France Télécom in May 2000, announced the acquisition of the global operations of Orange from Vodafone for US$37 Billion and the transaction was completed in August 2000.
Evolution of business services arm of France Telecom: 2000–2006
In January 2000, France Telecom bought out its partners Sprint Nextel and Deutsche Telekom in the Global One joint venture for US$3.88 billion to expand its managed data networks and IP-based communication services.
In November 2000, France Telecom acquired a controlling stake of 53% in Dutch-based network operator Equant, part of the SITA group of companies which provided network services to the air transport industry. France Telecom started the process of integrating Global One unit with Equant in 2001 and acquired all outstanding Equant stock by 2005.
Launch of Orange Business Services: 2006–present
On 1 June 2006, France Telecom announced the consolidation of the group's business services operations and rebranded the businesses of Equant and Wanadoo to a new single entity - 'Orange Business Services'. The rebranding exercise created France Telecom SA's global brand for mobile telephony, as well as all broadband and business connectivity services - Orange.
From Wikipedia’s article on Orange Business, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4