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SFR, owned by billionaire Patrick Drahi’s Altice Group, rejected an initial offer of €17 billion in October
Bouygues Telecom, Orange, and Iliad have this week submitted a revised bid for rival operator SFR, valuing the business at €20.4 billon.
The offer comes after the trios initial approach of €17 billion was rejected last year.
Drahi had previously indicated that he was looking for offers closer to €20 billion.
The proposed deal would see the three telcos split the majority of SFR’s assets between them, with Bouygues taking 42% of the assets, Iliad 31%, and Orange 27%.
All three operators would have taken a piece of SFR’s consumer business, including mobile and fixed broadband customers, while the B2B unit would have been divided solely between Bouygues and Iliad.
The company’s physical network assets, both fixed and mobile, and the company’s spectrum holdings, would largely have been split between all three partners.
The proposal did not include some of Altice’s smaller assets, including stakes in Intelcia, UltraEdge, and XP Fibre, and alsoAltice group’s activities in French overseas departments and regions.
Any deal will be subject to strict regulatory scrutiny due to reducing the number of mobile operators in the market from four to three.
Traditionally, European regulators have been loath to allow such mergers, viewing them as reducing competition and driving up costs for consumers. In recent years, however, opposition to these mergers is waning, with notable large-scale deals being permitted, including Three and Vodafone in the UK and Orange and MasMovil in Spain.
This trend looks set to continue. Earlier this week, the European Commission announced it is looking to relax merger rules across the bloc, with the aim of building ‘European champions’ with the scale to compete with foreign industry giants.
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