Patrick Drahi (Hebrew: פטריק דרהי; born 1963) is a Moroccan-born businessman with French and Israeli citizenship, living in Switzerland since 1999.[3] He is the founder and controlling shareholder of the Netherlands-based telecom group Altice listed on the Amsterdam stock exchange..
Biography
Patrick Drahi was born in Casablanca, Morocco to a Jewish family. When he was 15 years old, the family moved to Montpellier, France. His parents are both math teachers. Drahi has an engineering degree from the École Polytechnique university in Paris (a post-graduate degree in optics and electronics). He is married and lives in Geneva, Switzerland, with his Syrian Greek Orthodox wife; they have four children.
Business career
In 2013, Drahi founded the international news channel i24news. This channel is based in Israel, and broadcasts in French, Arabic, and English.
Drahi later became the owner of French cable operator Numericable. Drahi bought SFR, France seconde mobile phone and internet provider in France in 2013 from media conglomerate Vivendi.
Drahi and his group Altice entered the American telecommunications market in 2015 by purchasing a 70 per cent stake in Suddenlink Communications, the seventh largest cable company in the US. Suddenlink is valued at $9.1 billion. In 2015, Drahi bought Cablevision from the Dolan family, renaming it Altice USA with its flagship brand Optimum being the fifth largest cable operator in the USA. Drahi owns the Israeli cable television company HOT.
As of November 2015 Forbes estimated Drahi’s net worth at $10.3 billion. Forbes ranks him as the 60th richest person in the world, the third richest person in France. He was ranked as the richest person in Israel until 2016, when he came in 2nd.
The leaking of the Panama Papers in April 2016 confirmed publicly his identity as the shareholder of an offshore company.
Patrick Drahi Net Worth: Patrick Drahi is a French entrepreneur who has a net worth of $19.7 billion. He is a 2014 entrant to the billionaires’ club as a founder of Altice, a multinational group consisting of communications companies and cable operators. In January 2014, he listed Altice on the Amsterdam stock exchange and raised $1.8 billion in the process. Founded in 2001, he has successfully managed to grow the company over the years, mainly following a buy-low, sell-high mantra. To date, he has made more than 20 acquisitions of lagging cable and mobile operators, often at knockdown prices in locations across France, Belgium, Israel, Portugal, and the Dominican Republic. Over 40% of Altice’s revenue is stemming from France, whereas 27% comes from Israel. Born in Morocco in 1963, Patrick Drahi left Morocco at the age of fifteen. He went to France to earn an engineering degree from the prestigious Parisian university École Polytechnique, after which he started to build his fortune. Today, he resides in Geneva with his wife and four children.
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