Patrick Drahi is betting billions that he can thrive where a succession of fellow French tycoons have flopped: the United States, reports Bloomberg.
Drahi’s Altice SA is buying 70 percent of Suddenlink Communications in a deal that values the cable carrier at $9 billion. And that’s just a start. Altice has indicated it sees Suddenlink, with operations across the south and southwest, as a beachhead for further acquisitions in the U.S. And Drahi is said to have approached Time Warner Cable Inc. about a potential tie-up.
Drahi is the latest in a long line of French telecom and media chiefs to take on the world’s biggest economy, with little to show for it. Vivendi SA almost collapsed after an ill-fated foray into Hollywood, and entrepreneur Xavier Niel fell flat last year when he tried to buy T-Mobile US Inc.
“European firms often go for the U.S. because of the size of the market,” said Tomasz Michalski, an economics professor at HEC business school near Paris. “But they’re not ready for the cutthroat competition and the business culture that comes with it.”
Over the past two years, Drahi has expanded Altice in France, Portugal and the Dominican Republic with a string of debt-fueled deals. In April 2014, he agreed to pay $19 billion for Vivendi’s SFR, France’s second-biggest mobile operator. And in December he paid $9 billion for Portugal’s former national phone monopoly. Drahi declined to comment for this story.