the empire of Patrick Drahi, from Numericable to the press

2023-08-07 17:42:25

Businessman Patrick Drahi said to himself “betrayed and deceived by a small group of individuals”, Monday, August 7, during a conference on the sidelines of the publication of the results of Altice International and Altice France. In mid-July, his right arm Armando Pereira was arrested in Portugal, suspected of having enriched himself at the expense of the company.

Since the early 2000s, the Franco-Israeli entrepreneur has quickly built a telecom empire on both sides of the Atlantic.

► 2001: creation of Altice

In 2001, Patrick Drahi created the Altice group, an investment fund with which he bought out numerous telecom companies. In particular, he acquired Numericable, Noos and France Télécom Cable, then invested in very high speed broadband in Alsace.

In 2007, Altice finalized the acquisition of Completel and brought together the various telecom operators under the single name of Numericable. Patrick Drahi continued his stranglehold in the sector by buying in 2013 the first overseas operator, Outremer Télécom, which manages Internet access and mobile telephony in these territories, then Virgin Mobile. The following year, the group established itself abroad by acquiring Portugal Telecom for 7.4 billion euros.

► 2014: the battle for the takeover of SFR

It was in 2014 that Altice made a name for itself on the telecom scene. After entering the stock market, the group acquired SFR, after a battle against Bouygues Telecom, its main competitor. Altice pays 13.5 billion euros to acquire 80% of the second French telecom operator, and secures the rest of the capital in February 2015 by paying approximately 3.9 billion euros.

► 2015: investment in press titles

At the same time, Patrick Drahi also positioned himself in the acquisition of several press titles. He notably owns the Israeli news channel i24News, launched in July 2013, and the Israeli television group Hot. In 2014, he personally took a stake in the daily Releaseof which it held 50% until 2020.

In 2015, Patrick Drahi acquired several press titles from the Belgian group Roularta, including L’Expressor The Student. The same year, he bought the NextRadioTV group which includes RMC and BFMTV and their subsidiaries RMC Sport and BFM Business.

► 2020s: asset sales program

Faced with the fall in its stock market price, Altice reorganized itself in 2017 then 2018 and Patrick Drahi took over the presidency of Altice Europe and Altice USA, born from the establishment of the group in the United States. One of his last bets, at more than 3 billion euros, announced in September 2020, consisted in withdrawing his group Altice Europe from the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, where it was undervalued in his eyes, to free itself from market constraint.

But the rise in rates now poses a problem for Altice, whose debt is classified by the rating agencies in the category “highly speculative”. Contrary to its growth strategy, the group has embarked on a vast program of asset sales, for example partially selling the pylons of its mobile telephone networks in France and Portugal.

Weakened by its overall debt of nearly 60 billion euros, the group could suffer from the arrest of Armando Pereira in Lisbon on July 13. He had been indicted there as part of an investigation for corruption and money laundering.