Euro M&A: Altice Makes a Play for Portugal Telecom

More consolidation activity over in Europe this morning, as Altice is making its case for a bigger piece of the pie. They’ve offered €7B, or about $8.7B, to buy Portugal Telecom from Brazil’s Oi.

Oi agreed to buy PT last year, but the deal hasn’t closed yet. A series of missteps by PT has cast doubt on the deal, and Altice is clearly making a bid to pick up the pieces that Oi would rather not. Their plan is obviously to add a telco/mobile component to their existing cable businesses in Portugal.

Altice’s Numericable is already in the process of buying SFR from Vivendi over in France for $23B. This deal, should it come to fruition, would give them more than $30B of M&A in play. And as with so many of the active consolidators these days, Altice is controlled by yet another billionaire — Patrick Drahi. The big money guys are definitely looking to add to their empires right now, for the right price.

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Categories: ILECs, PTTs · Mergers and Acquisitions · Wireless