India's Bharti Enterprises has swooped in to buy the 24.5 percent stake in BT Group from Patrick Drahi's Altice, making it the largest shareholder in the British telecoms giant.
Bharti Enterprises is buying stakes in Britain's largest telecom company for nearly $4 billion
BT Group, Britain's former state-owned telecoms monopoly, issued a statement today noting that Bharti Global has reached an agreement to acquire nearly a quarter of the issued share capital of the company from Altice UK, worth approximately £4 billion ($5.1 billion). .
The Indian biz, owned by billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal, runs Bharti Airtel, a telecom group said to have more than 400 million customers in India plus operations in Africa.
The shares will be bought through Bharti Televentures UK Ltd – a company established and wholly owned by Bharti Global, which appears to have been incorporated in the UK on July 30, according to information from Companies House, the registry for all UK companies.