Moroccan-born billionaire Patrick Drahi’s cost-cutting measures have not always gone down brilliantly with the company’s he took over.
In 2017 Mr Drahi’s personal fortune took a nosedive when he took on dozens of telecoms companies in a short period of time.
Altice had a debt burden of £43billion which made it vulnerable and caused investors to flee. Shares were dumped and Mr Drahi suffered.
But it seems he has since bounced back, as Altice, the company he founded in 2001, buys a 12.1 per cent share in BT, Britain’s largest telecoms company.
Mr Drahi is infamous for sacking up to 30 per cent of staff at the firms he acquires. At French firm SFR his measures were so stringent staff did not have enough printer or toilet paper.
One former supplier, who worked with Numericable – a French cable operator founded by Mr Drahi – before the acquisition of SFR, said in 2016: ‘Patrick Drahi is a real cost-cutter — a real one. He hates duplication.’
In 2017 Patrick Drahi’s (pictured in 2016) personal fortune took a nosedive when he took on dozens of telecoms companies in a short period of time
Mr Drahi’s business career began when he and a US-born partner convinced mayors in southern France to allow them to lay cable for television in their towns.
The partners sold the company to John C. Malone’s UPC and were paid in stocks. Mr Drahi later sold his position for £34.4million and went on to found Altice, which he used to buy up European cable companies.
In 2013, Mr Drahi founded the international news channel i24news, which is based in Israel.
Altice bought a 70 per cent stake in US cable company Suddenlink Communications, which was then valued at £6.4billion, in 2015.
In the same year he bought Cablevision from the Dolan family, which turned sour in 2018 when the Dolans sued over alleged violations in the terms of sale.
More recently, in June 2019, auction house Sotheby’s announced it was being acquired by Mr Drahi.
Last September, Mr Drahi offered £2.1billion (€2.5billion) to minority shareholders of Altice in order to take the company private.
On March 5 2021, Mr Drahi listed his net worth at £8.2billion ($11.7billion), ranking him 248 on the Billionaires 2020 list.