Worth mentioning that that isn't a bottom line figure it's operating profits. Take out the interest payments on that just shy of £6 billion debt and VM's cash bundle actually dropped, £80 million or so IIRC.
Well spotted perhaps but it's not Sky's problem if VM struggle to make a profit. From Sky's POV VM's earlier companies were quite able to pay them inspite of losing money hand over fist so it's a tad irrelevant.
'Transfer' from VMs bottom line as you call it I'd call a company paying a supplier but *shrug* at the end of the day this is nothing more than one company disagreeing a price with a supplier, nothing more arcane about it.
VM could have retained the channels on their network but that would have meant opening up their network to another retail provider for those channels which does blow the financials argument out of the water to an extent, though whether VM customers would have tolerated something similar to the Homechoice / Tiscali TV 'Sky by wire' package is highly questionable
