Cable tycoon John Malone's Liberty Global PLC is in talks to acquire Cable & Wireless Communications PLC, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that could be worth more than $5 billion and widen the acquisitive company's presence in the Caribbean and elsewhere.

A takeover deal between the companies could be reached before they report their respective results in early November, one of the people said. As ever with mergers and acquisitions, it is possible the talks will fall apart before an agreement is reached.

Cable & Wireless released a statement confirming the companies are in talks about a possible cash and stock deal after The Wall Street Journal reported the news.

Cable & Wireless had a market value of about GBP 2.6 billion ($4 billion) on Thursday in London, where it trades. With Cable & Wireless debt, a deal could be valued at roughly $8 billion.

Mr. Malone is Liberty Global's chairman and largest voting shareholder, with a 25% stake as of April. The deal would come less than a year after Cable & Wireless paid about $1.9 billion in cash and stock for Columbus International Inc., in which Mr. Malone owned a stake. That deal handed him a 13% voting stake in Cable & Wireless. Mr. Malone has recused himself from the conversations between Liberty Global and Cable & Wireless as a result, one of the people said.

Cable & Wireless, which has more than 6 million subscribers, offers pay television, Internet, landline phone and wireless service—the so-called "quad play"—in the Caribbean, Panama, Monaco and the Seychelles, according to its website.

Liberty Global has been focused on the need to offer a "quad play" eventually in all its territories, which span Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. It doesn't have a mobile operator in the Caribbean.

Liberty Global already offers cable service today in Puerto Rico and Chile and recently created a separate stock dubbed LiLAC to track its Latin American and Caribbean holdings. The stock has dropped since its debut this summer. Still, Liberty Global executives have touted the region as ripe for growth. In August, the company said the region's revenue was up 7%, excluding acquisitions and foreign-exchange impact.

"That region as a whole requires massive consolidation," Liberty Global Chief Executive Mike Fries said at a September investor conference. "It is fragmented. It is underpenetrated. It is inefficient. If there was ever a part of the world that would benefit from the kind of things we do in terms of bringing rational consolidation to these broadband connectivity platforms, we think this is."

It is likely Cable & Wireless would be housed with LiLAC if the deal is consummated, one of the people said.

Cable & Wireless was created in 2010 when a British telecommunications stalwart of the same name with roots back to 1852 separated its U.K. and Caribbean operations. The U.K. operations were then purchased by Vodafone Group PLC for about GBP1 billion in 2012.

Liberty Global is a sprawling international basket of cable operators that has scooped up assets across the globe as it looks to position itself as a media and content-distribution giant. A series of large acquisitions in recent years, including a deal to buy the U.K.'s Virgin Media Inc. and Dutch cable operators Ziggo NV have made Liberty Global the largest international cable operator with 27 million customers across 14 countries.

It has been on a buying spree in content over the last year, agreeing to acquire Irish broadcaster TV3 and taking stakes in production house All3Media and British broadcaster ITV. At the same time, it has been bulking up with telecom deals, including with the purchase of Belgian mobile-phone operator BASE Company NV, agreed to in April.

Liberty Global is separate from Mr. Malone's Liberty Broadband Corp., which backs U.S.-based Charter Communications Inc., the company buying Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks.

Write to Shalini Ramachandran at shalini.ramachandran@wsj.com, David Benoit at david.benoit@wsj.com and Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 22, 2015 12:25 ET (16:25 GMT)

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