Carlyle Group Takes Numericable Stake

PARIS, December 21: The private-equity firm The Carlyle
Group has joined Cinven and Altice as a shareholder of French cable platform
Numericable, taking a 35-percent stake for a reported 1 billion euros.

Numericable, whose high-speed network covers close to 10
million French households, provides high-definition television, video on
demand, Internet and telephony services. It is the first operator to have
massively deployed its own fiber network in France, already passing 2 million
households and set to be extended to 8 million households by 2010.

Carlyle will take a 35-percent stake in Numericable and in
its sister operator, corporate telecom provider Completel. Cinven will also
hold 35 percent, and Altice will own 30 percent.

RBC Daniels and Goldman Sachs co-advised The Carlyle Group
on the transaction.

—By Mansha Daswani