Altice France: €24B French Restructuring Recognized in Chapter 15

Altice France S.A., the SFR-branded telecommunications group controlled by Patrick Drahi, filed chapter 15 petitions in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on June 17, 2025, under lead case number 25-11349 before Judge Michael E. Wiles. The filing was not a freefall reorganization but an ancillary recognition case: a tool to extend a French court-supervised restructuring across the group's roughly €19.2 billion of funded debt into the territorial reach of the United States.

The underlying restructuring proceeded through nine parallel French accelerated safeguard plans (sauvegarde accélérée) before the Tribunal des Activités Économiques de Paris. The Verified Petition sought recognition of those proceedings as foreign main proceedings so that the French moratorium and, ultimately, the French plan-approval orders could be enforced against creditors holding U.S.-situs claims. By the time the case closed on February 12, 2026, the SDNY court had recognized the French proceedings, enforced the approved plans in the United States, and cancelled the prepetition U.S.-law debt documentation. The transaction eliminated approximately €7.5 billion of funded debt and cut group leverage from 6.5x to 4.6x.

Debtor	Altice France S.A. (9 jointly administered entities)
Court	U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York
Case Number	25-11349
Petition Date	June 17, 2025
Judge	Hon. Michael E. Wiles
Foreign Proceeding	French accelerated safeguard (Tribunal des Activités Économiques de Paris)
Foreign Representative	Laurent Halimi
Recognition (Foreign Main)	July 25, 2025
Case Closed	February 12, 2026

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SFR, the Drahi Telecom Chain, and Nine French Debtors

Altice France and its affiliates form France's second-largest telecommunications group, providing mobile, fixed-line, broadband, and pay-TV services to more than 50 million customers across France, with over 26 million customer accounts as of December 31, 2024. The group operates principally under the SFR brand, France's historic incumbent mobile operator, alongside cable and B2B businesses descended from the Numericable–SFR merger. The ultimate parent is the Altice France Holding (AFH) chain controlled by Patrick Drahi.

The U.S. ancillary filing covered nine jointly administered entities. Beyond the lead operating issuer Altice France S.A., the group included Altice B2B France SAS, Complétel SAS, SFR Fibre SAS, SFR Presse Distribution SAS, SFR Presse SAS, Société Française du Radiotéléphone – SFR SA, and Ypso France SAS, together with Numericable U.S. LLC, a Delaware-incorporated finance entity operated from offices in Champs-sur-Marne, France. Joint administration of the chapter 15 cases was ordered on June 18, 2025, the day after filing.

Laurent Halimi served as the foreign representative charged with administering the U.S.-situs assets and prosecuting the recognition case. Ropes & Gray LLP, led by Ryan Preston Dahl, served as U.S. counsel; the firm later described the matter as a €24 billion restructuring when the deal closed in October 2025. Mayer Brown advised the Altice group on the broader €24 billion structuring, and Milbank represented an ad hoc creditor group in the European restructuring.

€19.2 Billion Funded Debt Across Three Layers

At the operating-company level, Altice France and its debtor affiliates carried approximately €19.2 billion of funded debt as of the petition date, structured in three layers. The combined Altice France group, including the non-debtor parent AFH, carried approximately €23.3 billion of funded debt in aggregate — the figure that produced the $22 billion headline in U.S. coverage of the case.

The first layer comprised revolving credit facilities with approximately €1.2 billion in aggregate commitments, governed by English law, with maturities at April 6, 2026 and January 30, 2028. The second layer was approximately €7.1 billion of term loans across seven tranches, ranging from a €202 million Euribor+300 tranche maturing in July 2025 to a €3.669 billion SOFR+550 tranche maturing in August 2028, with intermediate tranches of €304 million, €242 million, €471 million, €500 million, and €1.687 billion spread across July 2025 through August 2028 maturities.

The third and largest layer was approximately €10.9 billion of AF Senior Secured Notes across eleven series, maturing between February 2027 and October 2029, carrying fixed coupons ranging from 3.375% to 11.500%. That clustered 2027–2029 maturity wall, layered over the term-loan tranches coming due in 2025 and 2026, framed the refinancing pressure that drove the group into a court-supervised process.

Rating Downgrades and the Collapse of Out-of-Court Talks

The Halimi Declaration attributed the distress to a telecom-LBO profile rather than an operational failure. The debtors faced sustained capital-expenditure demands to defend market share in a competitive French telecom market, while a higher-rate environment and inflation pressured liquidity against a deeply levered capital stack. Credit rating agencies progressively downgraded Altice France during 2023 and 2024, foreclosing refinancing on workable terms. Moody's cut Altice France Holding's probability of default rating to D-PD in June 2025 following a missed coupon payment on May 15, 2025.

Negotiations with creditors began in earnest in June 2024 and continued through December 2024 without bridging disagreements over the terms of potential reorganized debt, the size of the equity stake to be granted to participating debtholders, the discount provided by those debtholders, and the pricing of reinstated debt. The composition of creditor constituencies shifted repeatedly as debt traded during the negotiation period, a dynamic that recurred across Altice's wider creditor disputes.

The decisive constraint was consent. An out-of-court exchange would have required consents from 90% in principal amount of each AF Senior Secured Note indenture, 100% of the term loans, and 100% of the RCF commitments. Those out-of-court consent thresholds could not be reached, so the parties turned to accelerated safeguard, where French law required only the lower in-court threshold of more than two-thirds of each affected class — a level the Verified Petition confirms was comfortably exceeded.

Accelerated Safeguard and the €7.5 Billion Debt Reduction

The restructuring was implemented through nine parallel accelerated safeguard plans, one per debtor, approved by the Tribunal des Activités Économiques de Paris on August 4, 2025. The plans eliminated approximately €7.5 billion of funded debt, reduced consolidated funded debt from approximately €23.3 billion to approximately €15.9 billion, and pushed maturities from a 2025–2029 stack out to 2028–2033.

Term loans and AF Senior Secured Notes, treated as a combined class, received a blended package: cash equal to approximately 7.6% of aggregate principal outstanding (approximately €1.5 billion total) plus accrued interest, an additional 2.5% early-bird cash premium for holders who acceded by March 19, 2025, conversion of a portion of holdings into approximately 31% of the equity of a new intermediate parent above Altice France, and refinancing of the remaining approximately 77.01% of principal into new senior secured debt with coupons increased by 137.5 to 142.5 basis points and maturities extended by two years and nine months. The revolving facilities were refinanced in full at par by a new five-year RCF priced at EURIBOR plus 3.30% per annum, supported by an enhanced security package including Luxembourg share pledges and a "golden share" structure, as detailed in the Supplemental Gumpelson Declaration.

On equity, pre-petition AF shareholders — the Drahi-controlled ownership chain — retained 55% of the new intermediate parent, with participating debtholders taking the 31% conversion stake. The result, which Altice France described as a €8.6 billion debt reduction measured at the group level, left the sponsor in majority control while handing creditors a minority equity position and extended paper. S&P Global revised its ratings on the restructured entities following the transaction, noting that the restructured capital structure remained unsustainable in the long term given negative free operating cash flow.

Each class of affected creditors voted in favor of the plans with high participation: revolving lenders voted 100% in favor on 100% participation; the combined term loan and senior secured note class voted 100% in favor on 95.16% participation; and AF shareholders voted 100% in favor on 100% participation. The French Court approved the class compositions as representing a sufficient community of economic interest, and no affected creditor objected to confirmation.

Provisional Relief and Foreign-Main Recognition Before Judge Wiles

Before recognition, the debtors moved for provisional relief to protect U.S.-situs property during the gap between filing and the recognition hearing. On June 20, 2025, Judge Wiles entered an order under section 1519 imposing a U.S. automatic-stay equivalent against affected creditors — holders of the term loans, AF Senior Secured Notes, and RCF, together with their agents and trustees — tracking the moratorium that the French Court had triggered with its Opening Judgments on June 10, 2025.

On July 25, 2025, the court entered its order recognizing the foreign proceeding, finding France to be the center of main interests for each debtor and recognizing each accelerated safeguard proceeding as a foreign main proceeding under sections 1517(a) and 1517(b)(1). Recognition triggered the full section 1520 automatic stay and entrusted Laurent Halimi with administration of U.S.-situs assets, scoped to the same affected-creditor population, with carveouts preserving the right to assert claims in the French proceedings and to seek further relief from either court. Altice France announced the U.S. court recognition in a July investor notice, and trade coverage noted that the recognition proceeded without creditor opposition in the United States.

U.S. Enforcement and Cancellation of Prepetition Debt Documentation

After the French Court entered its plan-approval orders on August 4, 2025, the debtors moved to enforce those orders in the United States. On September 30, 2025, the SDNY court entered an order giving the French plan-approval orders and the accelerated safeguard plans full force and effect within U.S. territorial jurisdiction. The order made the French plans binding and enforceable against all affected creditors in the United States and imposed a permanent injunction barring those creditors from taking U.S. actions inconsistent with the plans.

The enforcement order also resolved the U.S.-law debt instruments directly. The Term Loan Credit Agreement, the AF Senior Secured Note indentures, and the RCF documentation were deemed automatically cancelled and terminated upon implementation, the issuance of new notes and new LuxCo shares in the United States was exempted from registration under section 1145, and the indenture trustees, administrative agents, and collateral agents were authorized and directed to release collateral and execute closing actions while preserving their fees, expenses, and indemnification rights. The injunction was expressly limited to U.S. territorial jurisdiction and did not enjoin pending French appeals, plan-enforcement actions, or governmental police and regulatory actions. No unresolved objections remained at the September 30 hearing.

The only contested issue across either forum was a procedural one. A French Works Council objection challenged the consultation process for the three French debtors employing more than 50 employees — Société Française du Radiotéléphone – SFR SA, Complétel SAS, and SFR Fibre SAS — and the French Court overruled that objection on August 4, 2025, as recounted in the Supplemental Gumpelson Declaration. With the U.S. relief in place and the French plans implemented, the debtors filed a notice of presentment in January 2026, and the court entered its order closing the chapter 15 cases on February 12, 2026.

Key Timeline

Date	Event
June – December 2024	Out-of-court restructuring negotiations among debtors, AFH, and creditor committees
Late February 2025	AF Framework Agreement signed with OpCo Committee
March 19, 2025	Early-bird deadline for 2.5% cash premium
May 2025	Separate framework agreement with RCF Committee
June 10, 2025	French Court Opening Judgments; accelerated safeguard opened, moratorium effective
June 17, 2025	Chapter 15 petitions filed in SDNY
June 18, 2025	Joint administration ordered
June 20, 2025	Provisional relief order entered under section 1519
July 8, 2025	French voting deadline
July 25, 2025	SDNY order recognizing foreign main proceeding (COMI France)
August 4, 2025	French Court plan-approval orders; Works Council objection overruled
September 30, 2025	SDNY order enforcing French plan-approval orders
February 12, 2026	Order closing chapter 15 cases

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a French accelerated safeguard, and why did Altice France use one?

Accelerated safeguard (sauvegarde accélérée) is a French court-supervised restructuring procedure that binds dissenting creditors once each affected class approves by more than a two-thirds vote. Altice France used it because an out-of-court exchange would have required near-unanimous consent — 90% of each note indenture and 100% of the term loans and RCF — which the parties could not reach.

Why did Altice France file chapter 15 in New York?

Chapter 15 is the U.S. mechanism for recognizing a foreign insolvency proceeding. Altice France sought recognition of its French accelerated safeguard as a foreign main proceeding so that the French moratorium and plan-approval orders could be enforced against creditors and assets within U.S. territorial jurisdiction, including the U.S.-law term loans and senior secured notes.

Who controlled Altice France after the restructuring?

Pre-petition AF shareholders, the Patrick Drahi–controlled ownership chain, retained 55% of a new intermediate parent above Altice France. Participating debtholders received approximately 31% of that entity through debt-for-equity conversion.

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