Orange, Free and Bouygues Telecom are offering 20.35 billion euros to Patrick Drahi for the SFR deal, with negotiations set to end on Friday. The buyers are also weighing a talent retention plan as they worry that key employees could leave.
SFR has more than 8,000 employees, and the transaction would cut the number of French telecom operators from four to three. That consolidation would create unavoidable overlaps in support functions and retail stores.
Talent retention is now part of the SFR purchase math
The buyers cannot promise specific jobs, offer individual guarantees, or communicate the target organization until the transaction is finalized. Competition law also forbids premature coordination between rivals that are still legally competitors.
Bouygues chief executive Olivier Roussat called the issue a puzzle on France Inter.
What this means for French telecom operators
The SFR purchase would reduce the French telecom market from four operators to three, so the staffing issue is not a side note. For Orange, Free and Bouygues Telecom, the first constraint is legal: they cannot pre-negotiate the post-deal structure while they are still rivals.
That leaves retention planning as a holding pattern rather than a clean integration roadmap.