Patrick Dry: the success story of a media mogul

This week Altice, a French telecommunications media holding, announced that it had increased its stake in the UK’s largest operator, BT Group (formerly British Telecom), to 24.5%. The news that made the British talk about foreign interference and a threat to national security, for Altice herself, turned out to be quite mundane. After all, she has dozens of such assets, and the head of the company, Israeli businessman Patrick Drai, knows the ideal formula for business success: borrow to grow, and not grow to repay debts.

Eternal Wanderer

“A Frenchman in heart and soul, a Swiss citizen, an Israeli citizen, born in Casablanca… you, Mr. Drai, are one of those “Jews” whom the “French ideology” has condemned for a century, but which we so badly need in these times of local clumsiness population and chauvinistic suffocation” – this is how French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Levy described Patrick Drai. And this quote, perhaps, best of all illustrates his fate.

The future billionaire was born in 1963 in Casablanca to a family of Jews who had fled to Morocco from Algeria, a few years earlier engulfed by the war for independence from France. But even in the Jewish community of Casablanca they did not manage to live in peace. As early as 1941, the Vichy government prohibited Jews from holding certain positions in France, and much of Morocco was then a French colony. As a result, the father, who was a teacher at a local school, lost his job, as he was considered “not French enough.” In 1978, after the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973, which led to an increase in anti-Semitic sentiment, the family left Morocco. The French city of Montpellier became a new refuge for the Drai family.

Patrick received his higher education already in Paris – at the prestigious Polytechnic School and the Higher School of Telecommunications. At one of the student parties, he met the Orthodox Syrian Lina Nazira Zeni, who agreed to marry him an hour later. In 1990, ten years after they met, they got married. From Paris, Patrick went to work in Eindhoven, Holland, at Philips. However, after a couple of months, disillusioned with local business management methods, he wrote a letter of resignation. Then Patrick decided to discover a new continent and poisoned himself in the USA with his wife.

One solid TV

Patrick Dry is destined to be a mathematician. Among his relatives there were seven mathematics teachers at once, including both parents. Yes, and Patrick himself showed mathematical abilities from early childhood. Nevertheless, he did not want to retell the same thing from year to year to children or students. All his life he strives to discover something new. Even education in the field of telecommunications, which largely determined the future fate of Patrick, was not easy for him. The student was just bored. That is why he ran away from the routine of classes to work in Eindhoven. But now before him is not a new city, but a whole continent.

With his wife, Patrick traveled all over the United States – from the west to the east coast. During this trip, Drai realized what he would do – cable television.

Despite the fact that the first commercial projects of cable television appeared in the 1950s, it was not very popular among the population at that time. A full-fledged market in the United States took shape only in the 1980s. With representatives of almost all the pioneers in this area, Patrick met during his tour of the country. In Europe, however, many did not even hear about commercial cable television at that time. This segment of TV was under the control of public utilities, and officials were not interested in private business and investments. Patrick Drai decided to fill this niche with his own company – Sud Cable Services, which he founded in 1994 immediately after returning to France.

Patrick Drai did not have free money to do not the cheapest cable business then. None of his American businessmen who worked in the cable business were in a hurry to give him money to conquer France either. But the novice businessman did not intend to retreat either: he took a student loan for 50 thousand francs (now this amount is about €11.5 thousand) and invested this money in the company’s capital. He founded the company in the small town of Châteaurenard in southern France.

To get the first customers, Patrick had to literally go from door to door.

There were tricks and even violations of the law: given that many migrants from North Africa live in the south of the country, some of them needed TV channels not only in French, but also in Arabic. And at that time, broadcasting in foreign languages ​​in France was banned. But Patrick went to meet his potential clients and provided migrants with access to Arabic TV channels – but he did not advertise this anywhere.

After four years of hard work, hard work, dedication and invested money more than paid off. Drai was bought out by American cable tycoon John Malone. In return, Drai received a 5% stake in UPC (the European subsidiary of media company Liberty Global) and the position of head of UPC business in Western Europe. A couple of years later, Drai sold his shares in UPC, became a multimillionaire and bought real estate in the Swiss canton of Valais, where he also obtained tax residency.

“I quickly understood Einstein’s famous formula. If A is success, X is work, and Y is fun, then X + Y + Z = A. Z in the equation is keeping your mouth shut. If you want to be successful, work hard, have fun, and above all, listen and don’t talk too much,” Drai said in an interview.

And in debt, and in silks

Having profitably sold his first business project, Drai did not rest on his laurels for long. A couple of years later, Patrick founded a new company – Altice. The history of creating his first business with a loan for education eventually became the hallmark of Patrick Drai. His favorite strategy was to acquire troubled companies with borrowed funds, restructure and return these companies to profitability, and then pay off the loan using the profits.

It took Patrick less than four years to conquer the French cable television market. Having received money from investment funds Cinven and Carlyle, Mr. Drai bought out 99% of the country’s cable operators, including Numericable, Noos, France Telecom Cable35, TDF Cable36 and UPC France. And he spent only about € 2 billion on all purchases.

In 2009, Drai’s business expands outside of France for the first time: Altice bought out the Israeli cable operator Hot, which was in serious financial trouble. Drai quickly solved these problems, incidentally, by firing 2.8 thousand people and transferring part of the operations to outsourcing.

The purchase of an Israeli operator led to a significant event in Drai’s life – after the completion of the transaction, he moved to Tel Aviv, and soon renounced French citizenship, receiving an Israeli passport.

In 2012, with once again financial support from investment funds Carlyle and Cinven, Patrick Drai made an attempt to expand beyond the cable TV market. Altice made an offer to the French media group Vivendi to buy the second largest mobile operator in France – SFR. Vivendi rejected this offer. However, less than two years later, at the beginning of 2014, things got so bad for SFR that Vivendi put it up for sale. Patrick Drai won the fight for SFR against another French billionaire, Martin Bouygues, who owns Bouygues Telecom. This purchase cost Altice €13.4 billion.

After that, Patrick Drai did not limit himself to anything. As a result, one of the most popular news channels in France came under the control of his media group – BFMTV, the Israeli i24news TV channel, the RMC radio network (Radio Monte-Carlo), the French weekly L’Express, the daily newspaper Liberation and many other media assets.

“As for my adventure with the press, I will tell you one story. During an interview hosted by Arthur Dreyfus (Director of Communications at Altice.— “b”), who was sitting to my right, the journalist said that I was going to spend €14 billion on the SFR buyout, and only €14 million was needed to save the Liberation newspaper, Mr. Drai said in 2015. At the end of the interview, I told Arthur Dreyfus, that we will keep the Liberation newspaper. After all, it was about investing one thousandth of the amount that we were going to invest in SFR.” But Drai did not stop there: in 2017, he bought one of the largest US cable operators, Cablevision, for $17.7 billion. In 2019, he made, perhaps, the most status purchase for himself – the Sotheby`s auction house. Two years later, Drai acquired a 12% stake in BT Group, increased the stake to 18% in 2022, and now brought it to 24.5%.

But for all his influence, money, status and rich business track record, Drai has his fair share of critics. Many point out that his strategy of endless leveraged acquisitions will eventually fail and his entire empire will eventually collapse. However, the 59-year-old media mogul, whose fortune is estimated at $ 4.9 billion, has a different opinion on this matter: “If I suppress, as they say, my indefatigable appetite for development, then in five years I will not be in debt. And what from this? It turns out that I have been trampled on the spot for five whole years.

Kirill Sarkhanyants