Reuters
- Patrick Drahi, the founder of Dutch telecoms company Altice, is taking the iconic auction house Sotheby’s private in a $3.7 billion deal.
- The Sotheby’s acquisition under Drahi’s BidFair USA entity, announced Monday, is far from the entrepreneur’s first deal.
- Here’s everything you need to know about Drahi, his businesses, and his past acquisitions.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Patrick Drahi, the founder of telecommunications giant Altice and the chairman of its US arm, is back on the acquisition trail.
The communications giant, which raised $1.9 billion in an IPO of its US arm earlier this summer, is reportedly weighing a bid for Charter Communications.
After buying Cablevision for $17.7 billion last year to become the 4th largest cable provider in the country, Altice USA could rise to number 3 with an acquisition of Charter, only behind Time Warner and Comcast.
Back in Europe, Altice has quickly bought up competitors like France’s SFR and Portugal’s PT. Last month, Altice bought Dutch video ad tech startup, Teads, for $307 million.
"My vision is to do the same in the U.S., but bigger," Altice CEO Drahi told the Wall Street Journal back in 2015, and so far it looks like things are working out.
Here’s everything you need to know about the billionaire behind some of the biggest telecom deals of this decade.
Note: Lucinda Shen contributed to an earlier version of this post.
Drahi was born in 1963 in Casablanca, Morocco to a two math teachers, both Moroccan Jews. He used to grade the exams his parents brought home, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Wikimedia Commons
Source: The Wall Street Journal
At 15, Drahi moved to Montpellier, France.
vasse nicolas,antoine/Flickr
Source: The Wall Street Journal
He graduated from the elite university École Polytechnique and École Nationale Supérieure de Télécommunications de Paris, with his postgraduate degree coming in optics and electronics.
Collections École Polytechnique/Courtesy
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – grapier@businessinsider.com (Graham Rapier)