France: Orange to pitch Bouygues takeover plan to authorities

Orange SA will pitch its plan to acquire Bouygues Telecom to France’s prime minister this week, as talks progress on consolidating the telecommunications industry around the country’s former monopoly, people familiar with the matter said.

The goal is to reach an agreement on the transaction before Orange reports earnings on Feb. 16, the people said, asking not to be named discussing confidential talks. The deal is likely to value Bouygues SA’s mobile-phone unit at about 10 billion euros ($10.9 billion), though the structure — how much Orange will pay in cash versus shares and what assets will be sold to rivals to alleviate antitrust hurdles — is still being negotiated, they said.

Orange has approached Iliad SA and Altice NV’s Numericable-SFR SAS about selling them parts of Bouygues’ telecommunications business, the people said. France’s biggest phone company would keep between 20 percent and 30 percent of Bouygues Telecom assets, one of the people said.

Iliad is considering taking Bouygues Telecom’s shops, most of the mobile network and part of the customers, one of the people said. Numericable-SFR is interested in parts of the network, wireless frequencies, and some clients, they said.

Full content: Bloomberg

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