Vivendi closes SFR sale, to repay bond debt

PARIS (Reuters) - French media group Vivendi said on Thursday it had closed the sale of mobile carrier SFR to domestic cable company Numericable for 13.37 billion euros (10.60 billion pounds).

Under the deal, some 200 million euros of the sale proceeds will be contributed to Numericable's purchase of Virgin Mobile France, approved by competition regulators earlier in the day.

Vivendi said it would also use the sale to cut debt, announcing plans to proceed with early redemption of 5.3 billion euros in bonds.

As previously announced, Vivendi will keep a 20 percent stake in the new company that it is committed to retain for one year. Altice, the parent of Numericable, has call options to buy Vivendi's shares between the 19th and 43rd month after closing.

Numericable plans to make SFR its flagship brand and displace Orange as France's biggest mobile and broadband operator, Chief Executive Eric Denoyer said in an interview published online after the announcement.

The cable company - now France's second-ranked telecoms operator - aims to double its fibre-optic coverage to 12 million households by 2017, Denoyer told French daily Le Figaro.

It will also expand high-speed 4G mobile broadband coverage from 50 percent of the domestic population to 70 percent, he was quoted as saying. "We're making up for lost time."

Denoyer also played down suggestions that the company could now be interested in acquiring the struggling telecoms business of rival Bouygues. "We don't need it," he said.

(Reporting by Leila Abboud; Editing by Laurence Frost and Keiron Henderson)