Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal is to buy a 24.5 per cent stake in BT Group from Patrick Drahi’s Altice.
Bharti Enterprises said on Monday that its international investment arm would buy 10 per cent of BT’s shares from Altice immediately and purchase the remainder after it had secured the necessary regulatory approvals.
The conglomerate owns Bharti Airtel, a telecoms group with more than 400 million customers in India and extensive operations in Africa. Bharti Airtel emerged as India’s second-largest telecom company following a price war instigated by rival billionaire Mukesh Ambani in 2016.
Bharti is reported to be backing BT’s current executive team and strategy, and did not intend to make an offer for the entire company.
“I’ve been watching BT for long, long years, it’s a company which has a glorious past, has national status, has this tremendous amount of physical infrastructure in the UK,” Mittal told a media conference call. “So I hope that I can add some value to their thinking . . . we are long term, this is not a stock market operation and we are not in this for making a buck.”
The stake in BT was worth about £3.2bn at Friday’s closing price and the disposal comes as Altice sells assets to reduce a more than $60bn debt pile amassed during the era of cheap money.
BT shares jumped 7 per cent at the start of trading on Monday.