Liberty takes $808m slice of Ziggo

US cable giant Liberty Global has taken a 12.65% stake in Ziggo, the largest cable company in the Netherlands.

Liberty has acquired the stake from Barclays for about €632.5m (US$808.6m), it said in a statement. Barclays last week had to take a 14.2% share in Ziggo for €713m after the bank failed to find any buyers for private equity shareholdings in the company.

Liberty said it saw the deal as “an attractive opportunity to make a strategic investment in a market where it already enjoys a sizeable presence through its UPC Netherlands subsidiary.”

Meanwhile, Ziggo said it would “continue to focus on executing Ziggo’s strategy in the best interests of its stakeholders.”

The deal comes as Liberty Global’s planned US$23.3bn takeover of the UK’s Virgin Media awaits shareholder approval.

As of December 31, Liberty had operations in 13 countries with 20 million customers subscribing to 35 million services.