SFR GROUP LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - French cable operator Numericable (>> NUMERICABLE) launched its promised 4.7 billion euro (3.71 billion pounds) rights issue on Wednesday to help finance the takeover of Vivendi's (>> VIVENDI) SFR mobile network division.
In a statement confirming a Reuters story and providing details of the proposal, the company said it would offer 15 new shares for every seven existing ones at 17.82 euros per share.
The price represents a discount of 62.96 percent to the closing price of Numericable shares on Oct. 27 and a 35.10 percent discount to its theoretical ex-rights price, Numericable said. The subscription period will run from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12.
The SFR deal, which involves 13.5 billion euros in cash, a 20 percent stake in the combined entity for Vivendi and a potential milestone payment, received conditional approval from France's competition authority on Monday.
Vivendi published a set of provisional results for SFR late on Tuesday for the nine months to September that showed earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation fell 19.2 percent to 1.779 billion euros, reflecting litigation costs and lower revenue.
Numericable, controlled by billionaire Patrick Drahi, beat out rival Bouygues (>> BOUYGUES) to acquire SFR after a month-long bidding war. Its purchase of SFR would create the second-biggest player behind Orange (>> ORANGE SA) and ahead of Bouygues in a reshaped French telecoms market.
France's competition authority said on Monday that the company would have to divest certain assets and make its cable network temporarily available to competitors in order to give them time to develop their own high-speed broadband networks.
Those conditions were no threat to the project, said Numericable, whose shares have risen more than 80 percent since the start of the year.
Numericable expects it will take at least a month to close the deal after receiving the regulatory green light.
The company posted a third-quarter loss of 94.4 million euros ($119.8 million) in the three months to Sept. 30, versus a year-earlier profit of 12.8 million, because of costs related to the planned SFR takeover.
(Reporting by Sophie Sassard, Andrew Callus and Gwenaelle Barzic; Editing by William Hardy and James Regan)
