Liberty Global Chief Corporate Affairs Officer Manuel Kohnstamm has confessed that the contentious merger to form VodafoneZiggo in the Netherlands – a deal which should never have been allowed to meet regulatory muster – would never have completed a decade ago. Speaking at the Cable Congress event in Berlin this week, Kohnstamm described “two very strong companies that hold each other back” and said VodafoneZiggo had created an “accepted structure” for other markets. Elsewhere, some at Cable Congress believe that consolidation is essential for investments in next-generation networks. HSBC’s director of global banking and markets, Christian Fangmann, said that operators consolidating in Europe is good for the market and – bizarrely – he also implored regulators to take a back…