Orange CEO sees no stumbling block to Bouygues Telecom deal - Reuters News
01-APR-2016 12:49:47
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BORDEAUX, France, April 1 (Reuters) - Orange ORAN.PA Chief Executive Officer Stephane Richard said on Friday that there was no particular stumbling block to the acquisition of Bouygues' BOUY.PA telecoms unit but that certain legal and financial aspects needed to be resolved.
The two groups have set Sunday as a new deadline to find an agreement on the sale of Bouygues Telecom to Orange. The deal would cut the number of French telecoms operators from four to three and would make Bouygues the biggest shareholder in Orange after the French state.
"We're working on these aspects as we speak and we can't anticipate at this stage the outcome of the discussions," Richard told Reuters at an event in Bordeaux on the deployment of optic fiber technology in the region.
The eventual stake that Bouygues would have in Orange after the tie-up is not yet fixed, Richard said. The French state, which owns 23 percent of Orange, wants to preserve its influence on the former telecoms monopoly by keeping three seats on the board and a blocking minority at shareholders meetings.
The value of Bouygues Telecom's assets that would need to be sold to French rivals Iliad ILD.PA and SFR NUME.PA to ease competition concerns does not represent a major problem at this stage, Richard said.
Rather, the sharing of the financial risks tied to the execution of the deal is one of the main issues currently being discussed, he said.
The boards of Orange and Bouygues met independently on Wednesday, but concluded that negotiations were not sufficiently advanced.