Last year saw European tower infrastructure hitting what may prove to be the peak of its valuation, surpassing the values assigned to active networks or many other telco assets by the financial markets. That was one factor in the race, by many European telcos, to carve out their tower operations and unlock value to be harnessed for other activities, or to reduce debt. But the valuations may already be on the slide. When Vodafone group CEO Nick Read announced the carve-out of his company’s European towers – now Vantage Towers – in July 2019, he said they could be worth as much as 20 times their annual earnings, which would have equated to about $21.4bn in a portfolio of 61,700…