French billionaire Patrick Drahi seeks $3 billion stake in US cable restructuring

Moroccan-born billionaire Patrick Drahi and the lenders of Optimum Communications, his heavily indebted U.S. cable company, are at odds over how much of the business he should keep in a restructuring, Bloomberg News reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Drahi, Optimum's controlling shareholder, has asked to retain about $3 billion of equity in the reorganized company. The creditors are willing to let him keep roughly $500 million, according to the report published late on Wednesday.

The gap sets up a fresh round in a fight between Drahi and his creditors that has run for almost a year on both sides of the Atlantic. On Tuesday, creditors of Altice International, the Drahi-controlled telecom group that owns Portugal's largest operator, sued it in New York, accusing it of moving billions of dollars of assets beyond their reach.

A $3 billion ask

Optimum, known as Altice USA until it changed its name in November 2025, has more than 4 million broadband subscribers. Its operating subsidiary, CSC Holdings, carries nearly $22 billion of debt, with $6.2 billion due in 2027, according to Broadband Breakfast.

In a debt restructuring, lenders usually swap part of what they are owed for ownership of the company, which shrinks or wipes out existing shareholders. Drahi's request to hold on to $3 billion of equity is six times what the creditors are prepared to offer, according to Bloomberg.

Relations between the two sides have been poor for months. In November 2025, Optimum sued a group of its lenders, accusing them of colluding to freeze it out of the U.S. credit market by forming a cooperative and sharing potential deal terms. The lenders have denied wrongdoing.

In June, Optimum moved its Optimum East business, the former Cablevision systems in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, along with its stake in fiber company Lightpath, into a new subsidiary outside the lenders' reach. That unit raised $300 million of preferred equity from outside investors, while Drahi's holding company, Next Alt, swapped $200 million of Optimum shares for preferred units, Light Reading reported. Optimum said at the time that its preferred path was a negotiated restructuring of CSC Holdings' debt.

On Sept. 28, a group of lenders including Apollo Global Management and Oaktree Capital Management sued Optimum, Drahi and former chief executive Dexter Goei in New York state court. They alleged a series of fraudulent transfers and called the company "hopelessly insolvent." Optimum said it "strongly disagrees with the co-op group's allegations and believes their claims are without merit," according to DatacenterDynamics.

New suit in Europe

The Altice International lawsuit, filed on Oct. 13 in the Supreme Court of New York, was brought by a steering committee of lenders. Funds including Elliott Investment Management, Arini Capital Management, Invesco and Diameter Capital Partners are among the plaintiffs, according to the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and French telecom site Alloforfait.

The creditors allege that the defendants "have fraudulently transferred billions in value to other entities ultimately owned and controlled by Drahi," according to Traders Union, which summarized the Financial Times report. The dispute centers on the November 2025 decision to place Altice Portugal and Altice Caribbean, which together generate about 80% of Altice International's earnings, outside the group of assets backing its roughly €8 billion ($9 billion) of debt.

Repayments are approaching. Altice International has about €3.1 billion due in 2027, €2.8 billion in 2028 and €2.6 billion in 2029, according to Alloforfait. Altice declined to comment on the lawsuit, the Financial Times reported.

A smaller fortune

Drahi, 63, was born in Casablanca and moved to France as a teenager. He built Altice through a string of debt-funded acquisitions in Europe, Israel, the Caribbean and the U.S., and has spent the past three years selling assets and restructuring as higher interest rates raised the cost of that debt.

In June he agreed to sell French operator SFR to Bouygues Telecom, Iliad and Orange for about €20.35 billion ($22.8 billion), a deal that still needs regulatory approval. Forbes puts his net worth at $7.4 billion, down from about $26.5 billion in 2015.