Patrick Drahi

Telecoms magnate Patrick Drahi is the founder and owner of multinational Altice NV, which he took private in January 2021 at a $7.3 billion valuation.

Drahi built Altice with more than 20 acquisitions of lagging cable and mobile operators and has expanded further with highly leveraged deals.

In 2021, he spent approximately $4.2 billion to purchase an 18% stake in British telecom giant BT Group. Three years later, he sold it to India's Bharti Global.

He stormed the U.S. in 2015 by buying a 70% stake in cable operator Suddenlink for $9 billion and snapping up Cablevision for $17.7 billion.

Those U.S. entities were spun off into Altice USA, which went public in June 2017.