The news left Gent fuming. He was under the impression that if Mannesmann, with whom he had partnerships in Germany, Italy and France, did a deal, it would be with him. Instead, the German company not only was spurning him, it was invading his home turf with an audacious acquisition of Vodafone's arch rival in the cellular-phone business.Now Gent is fighting back. In a marathon session Monday with his board of directors, many of whom had to be patched in by telephone for the urgent meeting, he was contemplating whether to pull the trigger on a hostile bid for Mannesmann that could be the largest hostile takeover offer ever launched.

As of Monday evening, Vodafone was still debating whether its next move should be such a bid or whether it should try to induce Mannesmann, apipe-making company that is also Germany's biggest provider of mobile-phone services, to agree to merge on a friendly basis by offering sweeter terms. On Sunday, Mannesmann turned down a $107 billion all-stock offer that followed a one-on-one meeting between Gent and Mannesmann Chief Executive Klaus Esser in Dusseldorf. Esser was defiant Monday, repeatedly telling analysts in a conference call that the offer was "absolutely unacceptable."

He declared that Vodafone would have to pay twice $107 billion to get his company, a price hardly likely to appeal to Vodafone or its shareholders.If Vodafone should succeed in acquiring Mannesmann, the takeover would rival MCI WorldCom Inc's planned buyout of Sprint Corp - worth $115 billion, not counting debt assumption - as the largest merger ever. It would also create the world's biggest telecommunications company in terms of stock-market value, and add new force to a consolidation wave that is already reshaping the global telecommunications landscape.

A mergerbetween the two would highlight the sweeping changes that are engulfing corporate Europe, where merger-and-acquisition activity is now approaching the torrid level of such activity in US.

The only one who might not be surprised by all this is Gent, who joined what would later become Vodafone the day after it registered its first phone call from London's Trafalgar Square in 1985 and who has been championing cellular technology ever since. "It has been a consistent vision since I have known him," says Fred Salerno, senior executive vice president and chief financial officer at Bell Atlantic Corp. "He bet the marketplace would change and he positioned his company to take advantage of that vision." Gent, 51 years old, is eager to get Mannesmann because it would greatly increase Vodafone's reach across Europe, the world's most advanced cellular-phone market.

Mannesmann is not only the biggest cellular-phone service provider in Germany but the No 2 provider in Italy as well. The quest to create super-regionalwireless players has been a long time coming. Wireless is supposed to cut the telecommunications cord for consumers, enabling them to make calls while traveling.