Orange CEO urges government to stop meddling in telecoms sector

The head of Orange has urged the French government to rein in its involvement in industry consolidation even as two of its rivals prepare to test Paris’s authority with a €10bn merger. Stéphane Richard, chief executive of France’s biggest telecommunications group, whose largest shareholder is the government, said that decisions over mergers and acquisitions would be “essentially a topic for the French antitrust authority. The government has really no tools in its hands to prevent this”. The Socialist government of President François Hollande disagrees.

On June 22, Emmanuel Macron, economy minister, said it could block a $10bn bid by Numericable-SFR, the country’s second biggest mobile operator, for Bouygues Telecom, the third largest. He called the deal, which would create the country’s largest operator, bad for consumers, investment and jobs. Richard said before news of the bid became public that several government attempts to stop or influence takeovers, including General Electric’s acquisition of Alstom’s energy business and the sale of SFR to billionaire Patrick Drahi, whose Altice cable group controls Numericable-SFR, had largely failed.