Altice offer for Bouygues Telecom lifts shares across French sector

Paris: European telecoms group Altice has made an offer to buy France’s Bouygues Telecom through its subsidiary Numericable-SFR, the companies said on Monday, driving up shares across the French telecoms sector. Bouygues said its board would meet on Tuesday to discuss what it called Altice’s “unsolicited offer”, adding that no negotiations between the two sides were underway. “Altice will update the market in due course,” it said.

Neither party disclosed the size of the offer, but sources told Reuters at the weekend that Patrick Drahi, the controlling shareholder of Altice, had submitted a bid in recent weeks worth around €10 billion ($11.3 billion) in cash.