Owner of Sotheby's, media mogul, defender of Israel's interests: Who is Patrick Drahi?

Born in 1963 in Casablanca, Morocco, to two mathematics teachers, Drahi moved to France at a young age and holds Israeli, French, and Portuguese citizenship. He lives in Switzerland, where he has homes in Geneva and the Zermatt ski resort.

Drahi attended the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, the French university famous for producing the country's most successful business leaders and politicians. After working for a number of cable and satellite TV companies, he founded two companies of his own in the south of France in the mid-1990s. The businesses proved successful enough to attract the attention of the “cable cowboy” UPC of John Malone, now Liberty Global, which owns Virgin Media, and Drahi eventually earned 40 million euros.

In 2001, he founded Altice, which expanded aggressively through debt-led acquisitions to establish operations spanning France, the United States, Portugal, and Israel. Notable deals include SFR, France's second-largest mobile and internet provider, from Vivendi in 2013. In early 2021, Amsterdam-listed Altice Europe, home to SFR and Drahi's other operations on the continent, was privatized.

Patrick Drahi (born 20 August 1963) is an Israeli billionaire magnate and investor with interests in media and telecoms. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of the European-based telecom group Altice. A former French citizen, he lives in Switzerland.

Drahi also spent $27 billion on US cable companies Suddenlink Communications and Cablevision in 2015. The businesses were spun off into a new company called Altice USA, which also includes media assets such as digital-first millennial news site Cheddar, which was acquired in 2019.

Drahi, who has hobbies such as art, painting, classical music, skiing, cycling, and hiking, has four children. Forbes estimates his net worth at $12.2 billion.

Patrick Drahi is also a media mogul. Owned by French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, Liberation supports Israeli interests and the newspaper's editor-in-chief is Dov Alfon, who previously worked for Israeli military intelligence unit 8200.

Spreading its telecom and media operations around the world, Drahi does business in Portugal, Israel, the USA and the Dominican Republic. Drahi's fortune is thought to be more than 9 billion dollars.

Billionaire Patrick Drahi, the name behind the telecom and media group Altice, bought the famous auction house Sotheby's for 3.7 billion dollars in 2019.

Drahi, who owns works by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, described the purchase as “an investment for my family.”

Tad Smith, CEO of Sotheby's, said in a statement at the time that Patrick Drahi was one of the most respected investors in the world.

This acquisition also led to the delisting of Sotheby's, which was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, after 31 years.

According to Tad Smith, the auction house's delisting will increase its growth rate in a more flexible environment. It is expected that Sotheby's will reach a much brighter point under the ownership of Patrick Smith.

Founded in 1744 and the oldest company traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Sotheby's auction house has 80 offices around the world. Sotheby's, which organizes auctions in 10 different places around the world, generates an annual income of nearly 4 billion dollars, according to 2019 figures.

Christie's, the London-based auction house that was Sotheby's biggest rival and has been operating since 1766, was sold to another French businessman, Francois Pinault, in the late 1980s.

2021

Sotheby's breaks all-time record

Famous auction house Sotheby's sold $7.3 billion worth of art in 2021. With this figure, the auction house broke a record in its 227-year history. On the other hand, according to Bloomberg News, it was claimed that Patrick Drahi was evaluating the public offering of Sotheby's, which he bought for $ 3.9 billion in 2019.

With nearly 20 auctions this year, Sotheby's outperformed its 2020 results by 71 percent.

June 2021

Another trending acquisition from the French giant

Telecoms billionaire Patrick Drahi has bought a 12.1 percent stake in BT Group worth around £2.2bn, backing his ambition to build a fiber broadband network across Britain.

Drahi said in a statement: "BT has a significant opportunity to upgrade and expand its full fiber broadband network to deliver significant benefits to millions of households across the UK. We fully support the management's strategy to deliver this opportunity. We believe broadband expansion is one of the UK government's key priorities." "We understand that it is one of the policy objectives and a fundamental part of the leveling up agenda."

ENGLAND'S LARGEST

BT, the UK's biggest broadband and mobile operator, is reshaping itself to upgrade the country's broadband network, which lags behind other markets such as Spain.

2024

Expectation: In 2024, sales of artworks at auctions around the world will not exceed 4 percent of the same sales in 2023.

The shattering impact of high interest rates on Sotheby's owner's debt-fueled corporate empire is the most overlooked story in the auction industry; because in order to follow this, it is necessary to understand concepts such as bond maturity rates, term loans, and debt restructuring; For professionals other than finance, these are no different than an alien language.

However, the real issue is Drahi's increasingly urgent need for cash; According to Bloomberg, their companies need to pay approximately $21.3 billion by the end of 2027, for a total of $60 billion. Drahi has already sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets to close the gap.

Sotheby's CEO Charles Stewart denied in December that management was looking to take the company public; Bloomberg reported the same month that Drahi had cut ties with two investment banks hired to achieve his goal of a U.S. IPO in 2021. There may be two reasons why he did this: He decided to either keep the company outright or prioritize private investment.

The latter option is much more likely, given the Financial Times report that Drahi has held informal talks over the past two years about selling a minority stake in the auction house to potential investors “including European billionaires and the Qatar Investment Authority.” It may be true that Drahi viewed Sotheby's as a unique asset that he did not want to sell, even in part; But this stance is also a classic bargaining position.