Ana Figueiredo new CEO of Altice Portugal
The international telecommunications giant Altice has made an executive reshuffle appointing Ana Figueiredo as the new CEO of Altice Portugal.
Alexandre Fonseca, the outgoing CEO of Altice Portugal, will remain the chairman of the company which owns the brand MEO, but will also carry out executive functions on a global level: he has been appointed as co-CEO for operations in Europe (Altice Europe).
Ana Figueiredo had been in charge of the company’s operations in the Dominican Republic.
“This decision by the founders of the Altice Group Patrick Drahi and Armando Pereira will provide continuity to the dynamic, prestige and leadership that has already be consolidated in the Portuguese operation, as well as strengthening the same strategy in other places in the world in which the group operates”, states Altice in a communiqué.
Altice was founded by the Luso-French-Israeli billionaire businessman Patrick Drahi who is a telecoms and mass media magnate who has been living in Switzerland since 1999.
Armando Pereira is a self-made multi-millionaire of Portuguese origin who went to live in France at the age of 14 with just €600 in his pocket. He sold his share in Altice to a Dutch bank for €43 million. In France he founded the telecommunications network Sogetrel and became the largest supplier to France Telecom.
Today, Altice is a telecommunications and mass media company with official headquarters in the Netherlands and is the second largest telecoms company in France, behind Orange.
It had a market capitalisation of €13.7Bn in December 2017, and a market cap of less than €6Bn in June 2019, an 80% decline for the stock since Drahi financed the business with debt.
In 2016, the company had over 50 million internet, TV, and phone customers in Western Europe, Israel, the United States (where it formerly operated) and the Caribbean. Altice formerly owned a subsidiary in the USA until that company, while retaining the Altice name, was spun off through an IPO in June 2019, making the former USA division independent from the rest of Altice but retaining the same chairman, Patrick Drahi, and the same logo.
On 5 July 2021, Norway’s largest pension fund KLP said it would divest from Altice together with 15 other business entities implicated in a UN report which highlighted their links to alleged illegal — under international law – Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.