Bouygues Telecom consortium agrees to buy Patrick Drahi’s SFR for €20.35bn
Bid from group including Orange and Free-Iliad faces showdown with antitrust regulators in Paris and Brussels
A consortium led by Bouygues Telecom has agreed a memorandum of understanding to acquire billionaire Patrick Drahi’s French telecoms business SFR for €20.35bn, in a landmark deal to consolidate the French telecoms market and test European regulators’ appetite for mergers.
Bouygues, Orange and Xavier Niel-owned Free-Iliad submitted a joint offer on Saturday night to carve up SFR’s mobile, broadband and business operations between them.
The deal ends a saga which began last summer, when the bidders began work on the bid to acquire SFR and reduce the French mobile market from four players to three.
The final bid is the same as the €20.4bn offered in April and up from the €17bn proposal first made by the consortium in October, as the bidders worked to convince Drahi to sell the business he acquired in 2014.
The proposal — which is subject to regulatory approval — is likely to lead to a showdown with antitrust regulators in Paris and Brussels, who have historically been wary of “four to three” telecoms mergers, believing they may lead to higher prices for consumers due to less market competition.
However, regulators in Paris are thought to be more open to a deal than they have been historically, while European watchdogs announced the biggest relaxation of corporate merger rules in decades earlier this year.
For Drahi, the sale is the latest in a series of moves to cut the $60bn debt pile he amassed building his telecoms and media empire over the past two decades. Last year, he finalised a deal to reduce the debt of Altice France — of which SFR is a part — to about €15.5bn from €24bn
The proposed structure of the takeover would involve Bouygues, Iliad and Orange splitting SFR’s consumer mobile and broadband unit and its customers between them, while Bouygues would have the business that serves corporate clients.
The consortium said the signing of the definitive legal documents was expected in the second half of 2026 while the completion of the transaction could occur in the second half of 2027.