Paris (AFP) – The Board of Directors of Bouygues met late Tuesday afternoon to discuss the Bouygues Telecom bid by the Altice Group, parent company of Numericable, SFR, a project closely followed by the Minister of Economy, who will receive at the same time the owner of Altice, Patrick Drahi.
This is not the first time that Bouygues Telecom is the subject of an offer on the part of its competitors, but these have all been rejected so far by Martin Bouygues. “You would sell your wife, do you?” he replied, in this regard, during the presentation of the group results in February.
It is however not certain that the board of the industrial group will push this time an offer values its telecom subsidiary at least 10 billion euros, according to a source close to the dossier, a much higher value than that given by most estimates.
Before Bouygues gives his answer, Patrick Drahi The insatiable boss Altice, head of an empire in telecoms but also in the media (L’Express, Libération), will be received at Bercy by the Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron.
“I have no religion on the question of whether it takes three or four operators in France,” said Mr. Macron Tuesday at the annual conference of the Electronic Business Group (EBG), it . which could signal a shift of government on the subject
Before the deputies, the economy minister said his thought: “This is an offer that is too fast, we have not evaluated to date the results and consequences of the offer of SFR and Numericable we have employment doubts regarding payment period, compared with the required commitments. “
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,” added Eric Denoyer, recalling the commitments on employment made at the SFR redemption, “we have full respect of the (…). If we approach Bouygues Telecom, the method will be identical “
-. A beneficial operation for the sector –
Altice has received support from the CEO of Orange, Stéphane Richard, supports a concentration in the sector and who recalled Tuesday in the Financial Times that “this is a topic for the Competition Authority, the government has not really hands on tools to prevent it.”
Consolidation in the sector is seen as beneficial by most analysts.
For Moody’s, this operation has the “sense as a strategy” to Numericable, SFR and “offers the possibility to achieve significant cost reductions in terms of duplication and organizational structure. “
Among the professionals, the virtual operators (MVNO), which do not have own network, do not want to be left aside, while the Iliad, the parent of Free, said to have come into “exclusive negotiations” with Numericable, SFR to recover some frequencies, antennas and of Bouygues Telecom stores on success of the operation.
The question is whether that will be enough to calm the anxiety of the operators of the two unions, who warned against the consequences on employment, because of “duplicates shovel” between Numericable, SFR and Bouygues Telecom.
The solution could go through the Orange involvement in the operation, said the brokerage Nomura, who recalled that the telecom group plans 5,000 retirements per year France in the medium term, that could partly compensate by taking employees of Bouygues Telecom.
The offer, if successful, chamboulera again the French telecoms landscape 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 March 2014 Patrick Drahi – virtually unknown at the time – was in turn hit the headlines by seizing SFR, Vivendi acquired, following a long battle against Bouygues Telecom …
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