SFR began consultations on the social impact of its acquisition on Wednesday, June 24, with the employee representative bodies of SFR and the buyers — Orange, Free, and Bouygues Telecom — set to receive the first information in the process. SFR has about 8,000 employees, and the scenarios reported for the deal point to only 2,500 to 3,500 jobs being kept.
That would leave less than half of the current workforce in place. The acquisition closed on a price of 20.3 billion euros for Altice’s subsidiary.
Retail overlap puts SFR stores under pressure
SFR’s retail network is expected to shrink significantly because it overlaps with Orange and Bouygues Telecom stores. Free would take only a minimum number of jobs, with about fifty positions linked to the acquisition of the RED low-cost brand.
The SFR brand is expected to disappear once subscriber migration to the three operators is completed.
XpFibre sits outside the core carve-up
XpFibre, SFR’s fiber network, is expected to be sold separately. That leaves the workforce review tied not just to the mobile and retail footprint, but also to the fate of a separate network asset.
What this means for telecom buyers
Orange, Free, and Bouygues Telecom are already inside the consultation process, which gives them an early view of how the social impact of the acquisition will be distributed. Free’s limited job take from the RED brand is the clearest disclosed carve-out in the scenarios reported.