NTL, the cable company, declared itself open to an £8 billion private equity bid yesterday after suffering a sharp drop in customers.

The group, which last year rejected an unofficial takeover approach from a consortium thought to have included Apax Partners, Cinven and Permira, said that it would be open to any project that maximised shareholder value.

Asked about recent renewed rumours of private equity interest, Jim Mooney, chairman of NTL, said: “We always look to maximise shareholder value and anything that would do that we would be receptive to.”

The Nasdaq-listed group, which has tied up with Virgin Mobile to become Britain’s first single provider of fixed and mobile telephone, digital television and high-speed internet access, rejected the previous approach — thought to be for around £8 billion — claiming that it was nowhere near its true worth. A deal that size would be one of the largest leveraged buyouts.

Since then NTL’s share price has fallen by about 20 per cent from $27.25 to $22.20 and competition has intensified with the arrival of free broadband offerings from Carphone Warehouse and Orange, as well as BSkyB’s launch into broadband and telephone. BSkyB is 38 per cent owned by News Corporation, the parent company of The Times.

Yesterday the first sign of that competition was seen in NTL’s results, which showed that it finished the second quarter to June 30 — its first full quarter since it merged with Telewest — with 55,000 fewer residential customers. It said that the poor customer figures could continue into the third quarter.

Net customer disconnections in the quarter were 18,900, compared with 25,800 net customer additions in the previous quarter. Net broadband additions were at 104,900 from 191,400 in the previous quarter while net disonnections for its telephone service came to 21,600.

The group made an overall net loss of £195.8 million in the quarter, compared with a net profit of £73.5 million at the same time last year.

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