Minuteman Returns: Niel, a French billionaire, enters Proximus with prison housing and two-euro tariffs.

Approximately 6%. This growth is evident in Proximus shares following the announcement of an investment by Xavier Niel through his holding company Carraun, which now owns a 6% stake in Proximus. "It's purely possible," some insiders say, preferring to remain anonymous. "The reason is simple: he sees a company that is planning for earnings growth next year, and a slight possibility of a decline. The Belgian government is interested in dividends, so he sees an investment with a good long-term yield," they explain. "It's unlikely that there's an industrial logic here. He won't be able to request the appointment of an independent administrator ... Proximus is a giant whose shares are 54% owned by the Belgian government, which is on a dividend waiting list and will not move," they also believe.

"This involvement of Niel should have been announced and legally required when he exceeded the established threshold of 3% shareholding in a public company. This threshold prevents covert control attempts. Xavier Niel is used to buying stocks in different companies, usually at a few percent. It is a financial strategy based on profitability," experts say. "Although, roughly speaking, he doesn't need it. Being married to Delphine Arnault, daughter of Bernard Arnault, he is doing well...," jokes one of them.

"All telecom operators are very indebted, but not Proximus, which has a reasonable debt and has not sought to go international," they tell us. Although the operator has subsidiaries BICS and Telesign, which are involved in overseas markets and have debt of around €3 billion (on a turnover of over €5 billion).

"I have long been attracted to the Belgian market, whose economy is stable and whose healthy regulatory approach has created a dynamic telecoms sector," Xavier Niel commented on Tuesday. "Over the last decade we have built a pan-European telecoms group, always focused on giving customers the best value for money, underpinned by high quality mobile and fixed network infrastructure," he said, indicating that there was some non-speculative element to this. Only the future will tell.

The boy, born in Maison-Alfort in France and now 56 years old, is not the first time he has gone through "revolutions". In the late 1980s, he was developing programs for Minitel, a French technology that gave way to competition from the Internet and personal computers. His success in this area? Minitel rose in the 1990s. He became a millionaire before he was thirty. This allowed him, a man who considered himself shy, to gain the confidence and financial basis to launch the low-cost telecommunications operator Free in 1999, which conquered a market then dominated by big players such as Orange (France Télécom), Bouygues Telecom and SFR.

And his two-month stay in jail in 2004 on charges of pimping and embezzlement in the operation of Minitel rose (charges he always denied and for which he was not charged, ed. per.) apparently pleased Bouygues, the company that owns TF1 and with which Niel is negotiating a TV content offer (Freebox). But over the years, despite criticism of his abrasive management style, Xavier Niel has consolidated his telecommunications empire and expanded it.

In 2013, his background as a hacker seemed to interest him, and he founded École 42, a programming school that offers an unconventional programming education (self-study, free registration, no requirements or need for a diploma for admission, etc.). To be disruptive, you have to be unconventional.

In 2017, he launched Station F, a startup incubator in Paris, as part of the French Tech program and a desire to create his own small companies and help them grow, thrive or simply sell them when their owners see fit.

And of course, like all good investors, Niel is diversifying his investments and has invested in real estate, the computer games industry, venture capital and now part of the Belgian national operator Proximus, which is run by his compatriot Guillaume Boutin. And although it is a minority holding at 6%, Niel becomes the third largest shareholder after the Belgian government and Proximus itself.

Now, beyond his investments, Xavier Niel seems keen to make an increasing public impact. Investing in education and media and supporting various charitable causes. In media, he invested in Le Nouvel Observateur, Mediapart and mainly Le Monde, where he formed an alliance with Pierre Bergé and Mathieu Pigasse. He also bought a stake owned by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky in Le Monde in September this year for around €50 million. The price of influence, some would say.

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