The Competition Authority announced this Thursday that it had imposed a fine of 75 million euros on the Altice group for not having respected “the precautionary measures issued in 2017”, as part of the commitments assumed for the acquisition of the operator SFR in 2014. In 2017 , Altice had already been fined 40 million euros for not having respected its commitments regarding a co-investment agreement in the deployment of fiber optics with its competitor Bouygues Telecom, accompanied by “cessation measures under coercive fine”.
The Authority thus decided to proceed on Thursday with the “settlement” of these coercive fines and sanction Altice “for not having correctly executed the precautionary measures of the Authority within the deadlines,” it explained in a press release. “As part of this negotiated procedure with Altice, the Authority imposed a penalty of 75 million euros,” he added.
Altice had managed to acquire SFR in March 2014 through the Numericable operator after a Homeric battle against Bouygues Télécoms, putting 13.36 billion euros on the table to buy the telecommunications operator from Vivendi and give birth to the SFR Numericable group.
This acquisition had been authorized by the Competition Authority in October 2014 subject to various commitments to prevent the identified “risks of harm” to competition. In particular, it had estimated that the operation would probably question “the incentive of the new entity” to fulfill its contractual obligations in terms of fiber deployment, in particular vis-à-vis Bouygues Telecom.
In November 2016, the French Competition Authority fined the Altice group €80 million for initiating merger operations between SFR and Virgin Mobile without authorisation.
Source: BFM TV
