The Bouygues Board of Directors meets, Tuesday, June 23 in the late afternoon to discuss the takeover offer filed by the Altice Group, parent company of Numericable, SFR, a monitoring project closely by Bercy, which is expected at the same time Patrick Drahi, for a meeting with Emmanuel Macron. The economy minister has also shown much less engaged, a few hours of the meeting. He, in fact, said Tuesday morning did not “religion” on the need to have 3 or 4 telecom operators in France when he had spoken Sunday against market consolidation. “The consolidation today is not desirable for the sector. The employment, investment and the best service to consumers are priorities,” he had then told AFP. On Monday, the CEO of Numericable, SFR had tried to answer these objections, also raised by the Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, ensuring that this project was “to the investment income and consumers.” “The meeting of our two networks will enable us to give a boost to investment in high-speed fixed and mobile broadband throughout the country,” said Eric Denoyer who also recalled the commitments on employment made at the redemption of SFR, “we fully respected the (…). If we approach Bouygues Telecom, the method will be the same.”
Offer of more than 10 billion
This is not the first time that Bouygues is the subject of an offer from its competitors, but these have all been rejected so far by Martin Bouygues. “You would sell your wife, do you?” he replied, when asked about a possible sale of Bouygues Telecom, during the presentation of the group results in February. However, it is not certain this time that the board of the industrial group will reject an offer that values its telecom subsidiary at least 10 billion euros, according to a source close to the dossier, a value much higher than that given by most estimates.
Consolidation in the sector is seen as beneficial by most analysts. In a note published Monday, the rating agency Fitch estimates so that such acquisition “will reduce the competition for users such as frequencies”, stressing that such an operation will “face more obstacles than Similar operations in Europe. “
Among the professionals, the virtual operators (MVNO), which do not have own network, do not want to be left out in case of completion of the sale.
While the Iliad, parent company of Free said be entered “exclusive negotiations” with Numericable, SFR to recover some frequencies, antennas and shops Bouygues Telecom if the operation’s success , MVNOs also said they wanted to take part in the reorganization of the sector.
Concern unions on employment
The question is whether that will be enough to calm the anxiety of the two operators unions, who warned against the consequences on employment, because of “duplicates shovel” in the numbers of the group.
The solution could Orange’s involvement in the operation, said the brokerage Nomura, who recalled that the telecom group plans 5,000 retirements each year in France, it could partly compensate by taking employees of Bouygues Telecom .
The offer, if successful, chamboulera again deeply the landscape of French telecoms and especially that of mobile telephony. The sector was shaken in January 2012 from three to four operators with the arrival of Free, who had launched a fierce price war and hackneyed cards in terms of market share.
In the head of a media empire and telecommunications, including publications including Express and Libération , Patrick Drahi had already succeeded in March 2014 to take over at SFR ‘After a long battle against Bouygues Telecom.
(With AFP)
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