India’s Bharti Enterprises will pay USD 4 billion to buy out investor Patrick Drahi’s 24.5 percent stake in BT. Drahi, a Franco-Israeli billionaire, was the British company’s top investor. However, he’s selling the shares as his Altice group is quickening asset sales to cut its debt burden, which now stands at USD 60 billion, reported Reuters.
The move by Bharti, who owns Indian telecom giant Bharti Airtel — which operates in 17 countries across South Asia and Africa — makes it a key strategic shareholder in BT.
Bharti founder and chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal told reporters that the group hasn’t claimed a seat on the board, though he said he had some management ideas.
Drahi had acquired the aforementioned stake in the British company by spending about 4.2 billion pounds (USD 5.3 billion), Reuters reported. The news agency said as per its calculations, Drahi acquired the stake in three steps from 2021 to 2023.
As per Bharti, the company has already bought a 9.99 percent stake in BT. It will now wait for the government’s national security clearance to buy the remaining 14.51 percent.
“BT to my mind has a much brighter future ahead and they need to be following their strategy, if I may say, even more boldly,” Mittal told reporters, as quoted by Reuters.
“We are not in this for making a buck or looking at stock markets up or down. We are long-term telecom investors,” he said.
