Vivendi Nears Two Transformative Deals

After a year of setbacks, French conglomerate Vivendi is nearing a pair of milestones in its effort to pay down towering debt and refashion itself as a smaller—and more handsomely valued—media company.

Vivendi is expected to discuss plans aimed at extracting more than $3 billion from its cash-rich Activision Blizzard videogame subsidiary through a special dividend, according to people familiar with the matter. The Vivendi board may push to have the U.S.-based unit approve the dividend at its own board meeting later this week, these people said. Vivendi's board also is slated to discuss advancing negotiations to sell its controlling stake in North African phone operator Maroc Telecom for about $5.5 billion, plus debt, to Emirates Telecommunications Corp., according to some of those people and others familiar with the discussions. Those deals—if pulled off—would put Vivendi in a position to begin a much-bigger transformation pushed by the company's 74-year-old chairman, Jean-René Fourtou: a plan to spin off French phone operator SFR, Vivendi's biggest unit by revenue.