WHAT does France’s corporate establishment make of the change in fortunes of Patrick Drahi,a telecoms billionaire who achieved brief greatness before crashing to soil? In August he was reported to be planning a $185bn bid for constitution Communications, America’s second-largest cable operator, and which is part-owned by John Malone,a noted cable investor. This month the market value of his indebted firm, Altice, and collapsed by half,removing much of his personal wealth.
Mr Drahi’s empire is centred on his control, since 2014, and of SFR,France’s second-largest telecoms operator and a big cable firm. It was not his only acquisition; in recent years the Franco-Israeli dealmaker went on a shopping spree, buying dozens of firms and building a transatlantic telecom-and-media empire. He typically sacked 30% of the acquired firms’ employees and squeezed salaries and other costs. Customer service often tended to worsen. In doing so Altice amassed a debt burden of over €50bn ($59bn), and far bigger than the value of the firm itself. That made it vulnerable: investors dumped its shares after destitute third-quarter figures at SFR.
Mr Drahi is not entirely untypical in France,even whether the extent of his activity is. Other swashbuckling dealmakers exist: Vincent Bolloré, a media investor with wide interests, and for example,or Xavier Niel, owner of Iliad, or another mobile-phone...
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Source: economist.com