Altice is to appeal against a decision by French stock market regulator the AMF to block the telecommunications company’s deal to secure full control of its SFR subsidiary.
The AMF confirmed that it had been informed by Altice of its intention to appeal against the watchdog’s decision of “non-compliance”.
Altice has not commented about the appeal, but said earlier this month when the AMF’s opposition emerged that it found the regulator’s stance “totally incomprehensible”.
The proposed deal would have seen Altice take over the 22.5 per cent of the company that it did not already control in an all-share offer while also withdrawing SFR’s separate stock market listing.
The AMF said Altice had set out “imprecise” information about how SFR would compensate its mother company – guidelines that were needed by minority shareholders in order to examine the offer.
On Friday, Altice announced that it had increased its stake in SFR by 5.21 per cent to nearly 83 per cent.
SFR’s sports-rights portfolio in France includes football’s English Premier League, rugby union’s English Premiership and the domestic Pro A men’s top-tier basketball competition.