Patrick Drahi

Patrick Drahi (French pronunciation: [patʁik dʁai]; Arabic: باتريك دراحي; Hebrew: פטריק דרהי; born 20 August 1963) is a French–Israeli billionaire magnate and investor with interests in media and telecoms. He is the founder and controlling shareholder of the European-based telecom group Altice, and the majority owner of the international auction house Sotheby's. He lives in Switzerland.

Early life and education

Drahi was born into a Jewish family in Casablanca, Morocco. His parents both taught mathematics. He taught himself to play the piano and was gifted with numbers to the extent that, at age 11, he was helping his parents grade their students’ mathematics exams. When he was 15, the family moved to Montpellier, France. Drahi earned an electrical engineering degree from École Polytechnique in Paris, and a post-graduate degree in optics and electronics from Télécom Paris in 1986.

Career

After completing his postgraduate degree in 1986, Drahi then began work as a fibre optics researcher at Philips. He resigned in 1990 to go into business for himself, initially consulting in the United States on investment in European cable providers. In 1994, in France, he founded Sud Câble Services; he and an American partner convinced mayors in southern France to allow them to lay cable for television in their towns. In 1998 he sold the company to John C. Malone's UPC. Drahi was paid in UPC stock and went to Geneva to work for the company. He sold his position in UPC for approximately €40 million just before the dot-com bubble burst.