Altice France, along with most of its creditors, has reached an agreement to slash the company’s debt by €8.6 billion ($9 billion).

The agreement will see senior and junior creditors obtain minority equity stakes in the group.

Patrick Drahi, the owner of the French telco giant, will retain 55 percent common equity in the business.

“Creditors in the Altice France Secured Debt will receive an equity stake of 31 percent in common equity, while the AFH S.A. creditors will receive an equity stake of 14 percent in common equity,” said Altice France.

Altice owns French telco SFR, the country’s second-biggest telco after Orange.

In a statement, the carrier said the agreement will bring consolidated net debt to €15.5 billion ($16.3bn).

It was reported in October that Altice was considering giving secured creditors a stake in the company in return for them taking a hit on the value of their debt holdings.

As part of the agreement, Altice confirmed that creditors will receive a cash payment of €1.5 billion ($1.57bn), amounting to 7.6 cents on every euro creditor’s hold.

Altice said it expects the transaction to complete by the end of the year.

Assets for sale

Altice has pushed to offload a number of assets in recent years in an effort to tackle its overall debt.

In August, Drahi sold Altice’s 24.5 percent stake in UK telecoms giant BT to Bharti Airtel, in a deal estimated to be worth about $4 billion at the time.

Drahi only increased Altice UK’s stake in BT to 24.5 percent in May 2023, and even had plans to increase it to nearly 30 percent.

However, after years of acquisitions, the company has been looking to shift assets in order to pay down its mounting debt.

The company is open to selling its telecoms business and recently spun off its French data center assets, forming a new company with more than 250 facilities in France, which was then sold to Morgan Stanley.

Altice has been in talks over a deal to sell its Portuguese mobile unit, but ended talks with Saudi Telecom Group (STC) in June.

The Portuguese unit of Altice has also been separately looking to sell off its data center unit.

Altice’s Portuguese business has been grappling with a corruption probe, which led to the arrest of Drahi’s fellow co-founder and former chief operating officer Armando Pereira. Drahi has previously told investors that he felt “betrayed” by the scandal.