Former Portuguese banker António Horta Osório in a consortium comprising the funds Warburg Pincus and Zeno Partners is still in the race to buy Altice Portugal for €6.5-€7Bn for all of its assets, including control of FastFiber, the company’s fibre optic network arm.
According to ECO Online, despite rumours to the contrary, neither the consortium nor Altice have formally abandoned negotiations and all scenarios were still on the table.
The sale process for Altice Portugal is being driven at an international level and one of the sources that is aware of the content of the negotiations, says that Patrick Drahi, who owns Altice, is asking for an unrealistic sum of €8-€10Bn for the subsidiary which has the MEO brand.
In this process, Altice is being advised by the investment bank Lazard, while the consortium is being advised by UBS, the investment bank that recently bought Credit Suisse for which Horta Osório was chairman between 2020 and 2022, and UBS is seen as vital for the project.
The funds want a 100% control over Altice Portugal’s assets, rejecting the 50.01% share that Altice Portugal has in FastFiber, the fibre optic network used by MEO, being sold off separately.
This was one of the options being studied by Patrick Drahi. The other 49.99% is held by Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners.
And as reported by Expresso, the project from the consortium could involve reviving the former brand Portugal Telecom given that it will no longer be able to use the brand Altice after the sale.