Who Owns EE?
EE is owned by BT. Companies House records a chain from EE Limited up to BT Group plc, which is listed and therefore has no owner of its own. The register also settles an argument about what EE actually is: the company behind the brand is not the old Orange business but the T-Mobile one — and before that it was One 2 One, and before that Mercury. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.
Who owns the EE brand?
The network is EE LIMITED (02382161), incorporated 10 May 1989 and registered at 1 Braham Street, London.
Its person with significant control is EE Group Investments Limited (13233729), holding 75% or more of shares and voting rights since 23 June 2021, which replaced a direct entry for British Telecommunications on that date.
Several dissolved companies also carried the EE and Everything Everywhere names, so the number to rely on is 02382161.
Parent company and ultimate owner
The chain recorded at Companies House:
- EE Limited (02382161)
- EE Group Investments Limited (13233729) — 75%+, notified 23 June 2021
- British Telecommunications Limited (01800000) — 75%+, notified 27 February 2021
- BT Group Investments Limited (04278695) — 75%+, since 6 April 2016
- BT Group plc (04190816) — exempt from PSC reporting from 30 March 2018 because its voting shares are admitted to trading
The trail ends in that exemption, as it does for every listed parent on this site. BT Group plc has no controlling shareholder, but it does have two very large ones: Bharti, the Indian telecoms group, holds around 24.5% after buying the stake previously held by Altice, and Deutsche Telekom holds around 12%. Neither is on any UK register — those are market disclosures.
Deutsche Telekom’s stake is a leftover of the EE deal itself: it was paid partly in BT shares for its half of EE.
Brand owner vs operating company
EE Limited runs the network and holds the spectrum. BT sells broadband and business services through separate companies in the same group, and since 2024 EE has been positioned as the group’s main consumer brand, with BT’s own consumer offering folded behind it.
One filing detail is recent and easy to miss: company 01800000 was British Telecommunications public limited company from 1 April 1984 — the date of privatisation — until 24 June 2026, when it re-registered as British Telecommunications Limited. That is ten weeks ago, and it is an internal simplification, not a change of ownership. BT Group plc, the listed company, is unaffected.
When the ownership changed
EE Limited’s previous names are a complete history of British mobile telephony in one filing:
- YELDASH LIMITED — 10 May to 13 September 1989
- UNITEL LIMITED — to 18 May 1992
- MERCURY PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED — to 5 October 1999
- ONE 2 ONE PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED — to 17 April 2002
- T-MOBILE (UK) LIMITED — to 1 July 2010
- EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE LIMITED — to 2 September 2013
It began as a shelf company called Yeldash, became Mercury’s mobile arm, was rebranded One 2 One, sold to Deutsche Telekom and renamed T-Mobile, then merged with Orange in 2010 to form Everything Everywhere — the joint venture that gave the brand its initials.
The important point is which side survived. EE was a 50:50 venture between Deutsche Telekom and France Télécom, and the company that carries the EE name today is the T-Mobile entity. Orange’s UK company is not this company. As with Sky and BSB elsewhere on this site, the brand people remember and the company that now holds the name are on opposite sides of the merger.
BT bought EE in 2016 for a reported £12.5bn, and British Telecommunications was recorded as its controller on 7 April 2016. The 2021 entries that replaced it are internal restructuring.
Related brands in the same group
BT Group owns EE, BT, Plusnet and Openreach — the last legally separated from the rest of BT under Ofcom rules, with its own board, while remaining in group ownership.
EE has no continuing connection to Orange, which in the UK is now only a memory, or to T-Mobile, whose brand belongs to Deutsche Telekom elsewhere in the world. Deutsche Telekom’s remaining interest in EE is indirect: a minority shareholding in BT Group, not in the network.
Sources and verification
Every company number, PSC entry, previous name and date above — including the 24 June 2026 re-registration of company 01800000 and BT Group plc’s exemption wording — is from the Companies House register.
The Bharti and Deutsche Telekom shareholdings and the £12.5bn purchase price are not: those come from market announcements and shareholder disclosures, because a listed parent’s ownership is reported to the market rather than to Companies House. Companies House does not verify most filed information.
Sources and verification
Ownership last verified .