The Brazilian telecommunications company Oi said late Monday that its board of directors had accepted an offer by Altice, the European cable television and mobile services provider, to acquire its assets in Portugal.
The transaction, if completed, would allow Altice to add mobile phone service to its existing cable television operations in Portugal. The deal values the assets at 7.4 billion euros, or about $9.1 billion.
It would also unravel a merger with Portugal Telecom that Oi undertook in October 2013 to compete with rivals like the Spanish carrier Telefónica, but never completed. Portugal Telecom shareholders must approve the sale to Altice.
“With this step concluded, Oi continues its objective of reinforcing its financial capacity in order to maintain its objective of leading the consolidation movement in the Brazilian telecommunications market,” Oi said in a news release on Tuesday.
The transaction is subject to regulatory approval.
The deal is the latest in a wave of consolidation in the European telecom sector as mobile phone and cable television providers try to attract more customers by providing bundled services.
For example, Numericable, Altice’s French cable unit, agreed this year to acquire the French carrier SFR for about $23 billion from Vivendi.
Altice, which is based in Luxembourg and controlled by the French billionaire Patrick Drahi, operates a number of businesses across Europe and in the Caribbean, including the Portuguese cable operators Cabovisão and Oni.
The deal includes a €500 million payment dependent on Portugal Telecom’s future revenue. Altice and Oi entered exclusive talks on Dec. 1 after Altice offered to buy the assets last month.
The ultimate price that Altice will pay for the assets will be adjusted after the closing of the deal. Oi said that would include “adjustments usually adopted in similar transactions,” but it did not specify what they were. Altice had previously said they could include certain retirement obligations.
The sale comes after revelations this year that Portugal Telecom held short-term debt in Rioforte Investments, a struggling unit of the Espírito Santo family empire that includes the Portuguese lender Banco Espírito Santo.
Rioforte and several companies within the Espírito Santo group have filed for bankruptcy, while the Portuguese government engineered a rescue of Banco Espírito Santo in August. Altice has said the deal did not include these financial instruments.
The disclosure of the bad loans forced Portugal Telecom to reduce its stake in the proposed merger with Oi to 25 percent from 38 percent.
(Published by DealBook – December 9, 2014)