Orange is in early talks about acquiring French conglomerate Bouygues' telecom and media assets, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The potential deal would see the Bouygues conglomerate retain a minority stake in the combined telecom and media business, three people said. The tie-up is one of several possibilities being considered by Orange, which recently said it was assessing a European expansion. No formal decision has been made, and Orange and Bouygues are considering how they could overcome regulatory and antitrust hurdles, the report said.
In an e-mailed statement Bouygues said it "has no plans to withdraw from the telecoms and television sectors and reaffirms its long-term presence in these two industries." Bouygues earlier this year rejected an unsolicited offer from Altice, owner of French operator SFR-Numericable, to buy Bouygues' telecom assets. The previous year Bouygues lost a long-running battle with Altice to buy SFR. In addition to the third-largest telecom operator in France, Bouygues owns the biggest commercial TV channel in France, TF1, the news channel LCI, the newspaper Metro and a number of smaller TV channels.
A spokesman for Orange told Bloomberg it would not comment on "rumours" that have "artificially" moved the market over the last two years. Since the arrival of Free Mobile as the fourth operator in France and subsequent pressure on prices, a number of attempts at mobile consolidation have been attempted, but none successful at reducing the number of networks.
