Patrick Drahi Positions Himself to Be a Player in US Cable

When the French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi bought Suddenlink Communications in May and was mentioned as a potential suitor for Time Warner Cable, it may have been the first time many Americans had heard his name. But Drahi, 52, is no stranger to American cable.

Back in 1990, fresh from his honeymoon and living in a Paris suburb, he surprised his new wife by abruptly resigning his job in a fiber-optics lab at the European electronics giant Philips. He told her he was going to try his hand in the cable industry in the United States. Now, 25 years later, Drahi has amassed enough of a war chest that he may soon be on an American cable-buying spree, building on his acquisition of Suddenlink Communications, the United States’ seventh-largest cable operator, for $9 billion in May. During the week of Sept 14, he plans to be in New York for an annual conference of telecommunications executives sponsored by Goldman Sachs.