Warburg Pincus and Horta-Osório reportedly looking at Altice Portugal bid

US private equity outfit has reportedly teamed up with ex-Credit Suisse chair Sir António Horta-Osório to make a bid worth around €6 billion for Altice Portugal.

According to the Financial Times, Horta-Osório, who left Credit Suisse last year over breaches of COVID quarantine rules, could play a role in the business if a deal goes through. He ran Santander’s Portuguese operation in the early 2000s, when Portugal Telecom (now Altice Portugal) was a client.

Warburg Pincus’s European co-head is former Deutsche Telekom chief executive René Obermann, and the group has been involved in the telecoms sector, for example through its acquisition of T-Mobile’s Dutch operation.

According to sources cited by the FT, Altice has received a number of expressions of interest for the Portuguese operation, which is potentially for sale as part of a drive by Altice owner Patrick Drahi to reduce the company’s huge debt burden. Among those recently reported to be mulling a bid are Saudi Arabia’s STC, recently in the news over its move to acquire a 10% stake in neighbouring Spain’s Telefónica.

Altice France recently agreed to offload its French data centre business to Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Partners as part of its battle to bring its debt level down.

The company has also reportedly considered the partial sale of French operator SFR as well as its Portuguese operation. The latter, which trades under the Meo brand, offers fixed and mobile telephony, internet access and pay TV, and owns fibre network FastFiber.

Meo is the Portuguese market leader, with a 48% share of the mobile market and a 41% share of fixed, in a market where over 90% of the population are reached by fibre.

The Portuguese operation has been at the centre of a scandal that rocked the wider Altice business, following a Portuguese police investigation into corrupt practices involving Altice co-founder Armando Pereira and other individuals.