Who Owns BT?

BT has no controlling owner, but two foreign telecoms groups hold a quarter of it between them. BT Group plc is listed in London and, as a listed company, files no PSC register. Its largest shareholder is Bharti Enterprises of India at around 24.5%, bought from Patrick Drahi’s Altice in 2024, with Deutsche Telekom at about 12%. Companies House records BT’s operating company as 01800000, incorporated 1 April 1984. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns BT today?

BT Group plc is owned by its shareholders. No one controls it, though the concentration at the top of its register is unusual for a FTSE company.

The operating company is BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS LIMITED, company number 01800000, incorporated 1 April 1984 and registered at Braham Street, London. Its person with significant control is BT Group Investments Limited (04278695) at 75% or more of shares and votes with the right to appoint and remove directors.

That company number is worth noticing. Companies House issues numbers sequentially, and BT’s is exactly 1,800,000 — a round figure that has stayed attached to the company through privatisation, four decades of restructuring and its conversion from a plc to a limited company.

The 1984 incorporation date is the point at which the state telephone business was constituted as a company, ahead of the flotation that November.

Ultimate parent and corporate structure

BT Group plc is the ultimate parent. Beneath it sit BT Group Investments Limited, British Telecommunications Limited and several thousand further companies — Companies House returns more than 8,000 matches for the name.

The structurally important subsidiary is Openreach, which owns and maintains the physical network — the ducts, poles and fibre that almost every other broadband provider in Britain rents. Following a long regulatory dispute, Ofcom required Openreach to become a legally separate company with its own board in 2017, while remaining wholly owned by BT Group.

That is an important and widely misunderstood arrangement. Openreach is not independent and was not sold: BT owns it outright. What changed is governance, not ownership — it must treat BT’s retail arm and its competitors alike. So a Sky or TalkTalk customer’s line is maintained by a company BT owns, which is required by regulation not to favour BT.

Major shareholders or controlling persons

The two largest holders are both foreign telecoms groups:

• Bharti Enterprises — around 24.5%. The Indian group led by Sunil Bharti Mittal acquired the stake in 2024 from Altice UK, Patrick Drahi’s vehicle, which had built it from 2021 and sold amid pressure on its own debts.
• Deutsche Telekom — around 12%, held since BT sold it EE in 2016 and paid partly in shares.

The rest sits with index managers and institutions — BlackRock, Vanguard, Norges Bank and others — each at a few percent.

Bharti’s holding is the one to understand precisely. At roughly 24.5% it sits just below the 25% that would count as significant control under UK company law — and BT is exempt from that regime anyway, being listed. A quarter of Britain’s incumbent telecoms operator is held by an Indian conglomerate, and no PSC entry anywhere records it.

Deutsche Telekom’s stake has its own history: it is the residue of a transaction, not a strategic purchase, and it means Germany’s former state telecoms monopoly is a substantial shareholder in Britain’s.

Official records and evidence

The company numbers, the 1 April 1984 incorporation and the BT Group Investments PSC entry are Companies House records and can be checked directly.

None of the shareholdings above are. BT Group plc has voting shares on a regulated market and is exempt from the PSC regime, so Companies House holds no ownership record for it — the same position as Vodafone, Tesco, BP and Barclays elsewhere on this site.

Bharti’s and Deutsche Telekom’s holdings are disclosed through major holdings notifications to the London Stock Exchange and BT’s annual report, and every percentage is a snapshot from a notification date. Openreach’s separation is governed by Ofcom undertakings, which are public and are the authoritative source on that arrangement rather than any Companies House filing. Companies House does not verify most filed information.

Ownership history and changes

BT’s history is one of the defining privatisations in British economic history.

• Until 1981 — telecommunications are run by the Post Office, a state body.
• 1981 — British Telecom is separated from the Post Office, still state-owned.
• 1 April 1984 — British Telecommunications incorporated as a company.
• November 1984 — flotation: just over half the shares are sold to the public in a landmark sale that helped establish mass retail share ownership in Britain. The state sold the remainder over the following decade, exiting entirely in 1993.
• 2016 — BT buys EE, paying Deutsche Telekom and Orange partly in shares.
• 2021–2024 — Altice builds a 24.5% stake, then sells it to Bharti.

So BT, like BP and Renault elsewhere on this site, spent its formative decades in state hands. Unlike them, the British state sold out completely — and the largest single holding has since passed to an Indian group.

Related companies and brands

BT Group owns BT, EE, Plusnet and Openreach. EE is now the group’s main consumer brand, having largely displaced the BT name in retail.

BT no longer owns BT Sport: it was folded into a joint venture with Warner Bros. Discovery and rebranded TNT Sports, in which Sky also holds an interest. The channel that carried BT’s name for a decade is no longer a BT business.

BT is not connected to Vodafone, Three, Virgin Media O2 or the virtual operators covered elsewhere on this site. The connection people miss runs the other way: through Openreach, BT owns the physical network that most of its competitors depend on and pay it to use.