FRANCE – Cinven set for UPC France mega-deal

Fay
27 March 2006

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Cinven has signed a letter of agreement with US-based cable operator Liberty Global to purchase UPC France for EUR 1.25bn. The deal is still in its very early stage, but Cinven is expected to pay a full 11.4 times UPC France’s 2005 operating cashflow, with corporate overhead excluded from the calculations.

The company has around 1.6 million customers for its television, broadband internet and telephone services, primarily around Paris through its Noos brand. It reportedly paid EUR 650m for Noos in 2004. Liberty Global recently sold its operations in Norway to Candover for EUR 450m and is seeking a buyer for its Swedish business, which is expected to be bought by private equity-backed Com Hem shortly.

In November 2005, Cinven paid about EUR 500m to take a 70% stake in French cable operator Altice One, with the founding stakeholders holding the remaining 30%. Some eight months earlier, the buyout house acquired the cable operating subsidiaries of France Telecom and Vivendi Universal for EUR 528m and renamed it Numéricable.