A consortium of investors led by French billionaire Xavier Niel has closed the transaction to acquire and merge Ukrainian mobile operator Lifecell with service provider Datagroup-Volia, as per the reports.
The transaction closed following fulfilling the conditions precedent, including all required regulatory approvals. The consortium will combine Datagroup-Volia with Lifecell to create a unified telecom platform for growth, expansion, and investment. The consortium includes US private equity firm Horizon Capital.
Lifecell was fully owned by Turkcell. In April 2024, a Kyiv court cleared the path for the acquisition by lifting the seizure of Lifecell’s shares belonging to sanctioned Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, who held approximately a 20% stake through LetterOne.
The next significant milestone for the combined platform is signing loan documents and then disbursing the USD 435 million joint financing package provided by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
Following the announcement of this agreement at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin in June, both institutions have obtained the necessary board approvals. Datagroup and Volia own a network covering over 4 million Ukrainian households in over 100 cities, with over 35,000 kilometres of fibre infrastructure.
Additionally, Turkcell affirmed that the sale of its Ukrainian-based subsidiaries has ended. The statement states that Turkcell has received USD 524,3 million following the completion of the transfer of shares, along with all rights and liabilities in Lifecell, Global Bilgi, and Ukrtower, Turkcell’s subsidiaries, to DVL Telecom, one of the NJJ Holding group companies. The sale of Lifecell was first approved by the company in January.
The deal is worth at least USD 524.3 million, Turkcell mentioned. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the International Finance Corporation will provide USD 435 million in loans, the firms added. The new platform is expected to rack up around 10 million mobile users, and more than 4 million people connected via fixed-access network.
“NJJ Holding, the leading investor alongside Horizon Capital, is one of Niel’s investment vehicles. It is the sole owner of Atlas Investissement, which is also the top shareholder of telecoms group Millicom. Iliad, at the core of Niel’s overarching telco business, will not be the parent company of this new Ukrainian provider,” Reuters reported further.
Who Is Xavier Niel?
The tech magnate owns the telecom behemoth Iliad, which is the parent company of one of France’s biggest ISPs (Internet Service Providers), Free. Monaco Telecom and Orange Switzerland, which he purchased in 2014 for USD 2.09 billion and rebranded Salt, are also part of his holdings.
Niel also holds stock in the British telecom provider Vodafone, the French daily LeMonde, and the Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield commercial real estate company, which is headquartered in Paris.
Niel first made his mark by investing in the maiden Internet Service Provider in France, World-NET, created by Sebastien Socchard, Philippe Langlois and Pierre Seguret. This company was sold for 30 million euros the year before the internet bubble burst.
Niel is a business leader marked by versatility as apart from co-owning the newspaper Le Monde, he also has controlling stakes in Monaco Telecom, Salt Mobile and Eir. Apart from being the chairman and chief strategy officer for Iliad, Niel is a board member of American global investment giant KKR and French real estate venture Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield.
After taking over a company subsequently renamed Iliad, Xavier Niel launched in 1996 the first reversed directory service on the Minitel. This service was responsible for one million euros of revenue per year for Iliad until the end of the Minitel in France in 2012. Niel remains Iliad’s majority shareholder, holding 71% of the share capital.
Just before the year 2000, Niel created Free, a French Internet service provider. In 2002, Free launched a broadband package at a low price (29.99 euro per month), which became the benchmark in the market then. Free also developed and launched the Freebox: the first triple-play multi-service box in France. The free modem service worked wonders for the company, as many of the existing internet customers switched to broadband for the sake of comfort.
In 2012, Niel created Free Mobile, which offered unlimited voice calls, text and data at the lowest price in the market in France (19.99 euro per month). In 2017, the entrepreneur launched the Iliad Italia brand in Italy, which in April 2021 conquered 9% of the market or 7 million subscribers with mobile offers for less than 10 euros. A launch on fixed connectivity is also planned for 2021.
After restructuring its assets leading to the creation of the holding HoldCo, Xavier Niel made major manoeuvres to reconquer the markets and strengthen its position in the capital of Iliad. In November 2019 he bought back 120 euro more than 11.7 million Iliad shares via a public share buyback operation, automatically raising the price to this level. He increased his control in the company from around 52% to 72%.
In September 2020, Niel again hit the headlines, as he through Iliad, launched a public offer for the Polish operator Play, leader of the Polish mobile market with 15 million subscribers after having bought a 96% stake on the market for 2.2 billion euros.
Man Of Versatility
In 2014, Cable & Wireless Communications (CWC) sold its 55% economic interest in Monaco Telecom to NJJ Capital, an investment vehicle controlled by Xavier Niel for USD 445 million. By the year-end, via its holding company NJJ Capital, the French tycoon acquired for USD 2.7 billion (2.8 billion Swiss francs) Orange Switzerland (owned by Apax Partners since 2012), which was renamed Salt Mobile in 2015. Five years down the line, Salt Mobile sold 90% of its towers for 800 million dollars to Cellnex.
In 2018, Niel bought 100% of the Cypriot operator MTN Cyprus through Monaco Telecom for 260 million euros, the carrier was rebranded into Epic the next year. Also in 2018, through NJJ, the billionaire invested 330 million euros for 32.9% of the capital of Eir. Iliad, for its part, took a 31.6% stake in Eir’s capital with a call option to buy back 80% of NJJ’s stake in 2024.
In April 2018, via NJJ, Niel acquired a stake in the capital of Tigo Senegal through the “Teyliom” consortium, a company which was rebranded into Free Senegal in 2019. In 2020, the businessman bought 100% of the operator Vodafone Malta through Monaco Telecom for 250 million euros, market leader for telecommunications operators in Malta, in the fields of mobile, internet and fixed communications. The company was rebranded into Epic in November 2020.
In April 2024, it was announced NJJ Holding had been given regulatory approval to acquire Ukrainian fixed telecom and pay-TV provider Datagroup-Volia. Talking about Niel’s involvement with the Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, through his holding NJJ, in 2020, the businessman bought shares on the stock market of the French real estate venture with Leon Bressler and Susana Gallardo. The consortium announced in the same year that their stake in the company exceeded 5%, following which the entity was able to cancel the company’s plan of capital increase following a shareholders vote. In 2021, Niel took over the control of 15.5% stakes in Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield.
Niel has also been known as an angel investor. He co-founded with Jeremie Berrebi Kima Ventures, a fund dedicated to investing in start-ups around the world. From 2010-2014, Kima Ventures invested in 330 companies in 32 countries. Business Insider described Xavier Niel and Jeremie Berrebi as “almost certainly the most active angel investors in the world.”
Niel also created a school named 42, which is a free technical school with no teachers, no books, and no tuition for 1000 people every year. As of 2021, 33 campuses have been opened in the world. In 2021, the tycoon became the first shareholder of the company Unieuro, which is the largest Italian retailer of consumer electronics and household appliances by number of outlets, with a network of 460 stores throughout Italy.
In 2023, Niel was part of an investor group that had bought a 7.5% stake in Swiss asset manager GAM.
TikTok And AI Commitments
Xavier Niel will be joining ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as a director, the company announced to the South China Morning Post.
Experts stated that Niel isn’t a name that typically appears for prominent board posts, so this is an interesting move.
As per the report, he is taking over as ByteDance’s board member from Philippe Laffont, who founded the investment firm Coatue Management in New York. There were reports about Coatue mulling to sell some of its ownership in ByteDance.
In addition, he has actively participated in start-up investing through various investment vehicles and his seed company, Kima Ventures. Also, he established the Computer Science School 42 and Station F, a start-up campus located in Paris.
Among other news, a French artificial intelligence (AI) research lab backed by Niel recently showed off a new voice assistant with a variety of human-like emotions that is similar to a product that OpenAI promised but delayed over safety concerns.
Kyutai, an AI non-profit group formed in 2023, revealed its Moshi service at an event in Paris in July 2024. Scientists for the lab said their system can speak with 70 different emotions and styles. In the words of Bloomberg, these individuals “demoed the assistant offering advice on climbing Mt. Everest and reciting a poem it had composed with a thick French accent.”