Bharti Enterprises has completed acquisition of a 24.5 per cent stake in UK’s BT Group from Patrick Drahi. The transaction is worth 3.2 billion pounds ($4 billion). The stake was sold via Altice UK in two parts, the second of which is now completed.
Drahi is under pressure to sell off assets as his Altice Group grapples with €60 billion debt and the fallout from an accounting scandal in Portugal.
He agreed in August to sell Altice’s stake in BT to Bharti Enterprises, the majority stakeholder in Bharti Telecom. In turn, Bharti Telecom is the largest shareholder in India’s second biggest telco, Bharti Airtel.
Bharti’s stake is worth about £3.6 billion (€4.32bn) based on BT’s share price. The transaction sent shares in BT up 6% to 139 pence in early trading and will be a litmus test of the new Labor government’s attitude towards foreign ownership of stakes in key sectors.
