Rebel shareholders in Vodafone received a solid trouncing on Tuesday, when proposals to spin off the holding in Verizon Wireless were defeated by a landslide of votes.

At the company’s AGM on Tuesday, 33.4 billion votes were cast against plans to separate out the company’s 45 per cent interest in Verizon Wireless, with only 1.6 billion cast in favour of the move.

Last week, Vodafone hinted that it would prefer to hold onto its stake in Verizon Wireless, despite a handful of shareholders calling to offload the asset.

Sarin said that the value of the Verizon stake had increased from $10bn to $15bn in 2006 and would continue to increase. He said that the operator is looking at ways to maximise the value of the holding for shareholders and hinted that the holding would be in a position to pay dividends from 2009.