Light Reading – Orange Gets Serious About $10.9B Bouygues Takeover – Report
Overcoming political and regulatory opposition to a merger is likely to be a major challenge for Orange and Bouygues, according to Bengt Nordström, the CEO of market research and consulting company Northstream.
“It would create a very dominant player which I think has very low probability to be approved by French and EU regulation and competition authorities,” he tells Light Reading. “A merger between Free [the brand used by Iliad, France’s number-four player] and Bouygues has a bigger probability of being approved but with current regulatory winds even that one would be unlikely, at least in 2016.”