(Reuters) -French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Wednesday he will be “extremely vigilant” after telecoms operators Bouygues Telecom, Iliad’s Free and Orange offered to buy rival SFR, owned by billionaire Patrick Drahi’s Altice France.
The three French telecoms firms said late on Tuesday they had submitted a 17-billion-euro ($19.8 billion) non-binding offer to buy most of Altice France’s assets in what could be Europe’s second-largest corporate deal this year.
“I’m going to be vigilant about two things: the impact on consumer prices and the impact on the quality of service,” Lescure said in an interview on French radio RTL.
“There’s a competition authority; it’s independent. It’s there to protect consumers, and it will do so,” he said.
Shares of Bouygues were up 8% in early Paris trading, trading at their highest level in over seven years. Orange shares rose over 4%.
Altice France, which closed its debt restructuring in October and owns the second-biggest operator in the country, did not respond to a Reuters’ request for comment on Lescure’s remarks.
($1 = 0.8593 euros)
(Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro, additional reporting by Alessandro Parodi; Editing by Dominique Patton)
