Altice, the French company that recently bought a 24.5% stake in BT, is mulling a sale of some of its assets to cut its debt pile.
According to reports last night, Altice, which is the vehicle of French telecoms billionaire Patrick Drahi, has appointed a raft of European banks to comb through its portfolio and recommend potential disposals.
Lazard, BNP Paribas, Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), will assess Altice's major assets in the region, including SFR, France's second-biggest telecoms group, telecoms units in Portugal and the Dominican Republic, as well as advertising company Teads.
Last month, Drahi vowed to raise €3 billion "one way or another" to reduce its borrowings.
There was no mention of Altice’s stake in BT in the report, which is worth about £2.8 billion at today’s share price of 113p, close to a year’s low.
At that level, it is well out of the money compared to the price it paid for its original 12% stake, which was around 180p in June 2021.
Analysts have questioned how easy it will be to sell all or part of the stake in SFR after Armando Pereira, the Altice group’s co-founder was placed under house arrest as part of a money laundering and corruption probe.
Drahi told investors in August he felt "shocked" and "betrayed" by the ongoing corruption probe, which led to the suspension of 15 employees in Portugal, France, and the United States and dozens of suppliers.
Les Echos reported on Wednesday that Drahi is close to selling its data centres in France.