Cable & Wireless played down speculation it was considering selling its business today by saying it made more sense to acquire assets and build up its operations.
Persistent bid speculation has underpinned shares in the country's second-ranked corporate telecoms provider as a recovery in its laggard UK business gathers pace, making it at one point this year one of the top performing telecoms stocks globally.
But Jim Marsh, chief executive of Europe, Asia & US, said his corporation might in fact be on the acquisition trail.
"The question is, if you have a unique capability like we do, why would you want to sell that?" he said.
"Surely it's more likely that you'd want to continue to build up the business you have today, by buying things. So it's unlikely that we will choose to sell the business when we've got such unique asset capability."
Cable & Wireless is in the middle of a radical overhaul in the United Kingdom that will slash 3,000 jobs over five years.