Billionaire Drahi's Cunning Gets Clearer Daily
The telecom entrepreneur wants Altice creditors to take losses. He’s succeeding in bringing them to the table.
Patrick Drahi caused outrage in March when he suggested the creditors owed nearly €25 billion ($27 billion) by his French telecoms empire should agree to be repaid less than par. The billionaire entrepreneur appeared to have picked a fight he might not win. Six months on, throwing down the gauntlet looks like an increasingly smart tactic.
The stage is being set for a deal that would see some Altice France SA bondholders take big losses, others take a smaller haircut and Drahi’s shareholding escape negative equity. It seems astonishing that the owner of a company straining under extreme leverage could pull this off. But it becomes entirely logical once you consider how Altice exemplifies the power that lenders ceded in the cheap-money era.